Sullivan Celebrates More Than 100 U.Va. Authors at Annual Reception

Professors looking at books on a table

Faculty authors browse the collection of their colleagues work from this past year at the Faculty Authors Reception at Carr's Hill.

On Tuesday, recently published University of Virginia faculty members gathered at Carr’s Hill to celebrate their own accomplishments and the successes of their colleagues. U.Va. President Teresa A. Sullivan hosted the annual reception to recognize their work.

“Scholarly productivity is one of the things that adds greatly to the pleasure of being at the University,” she said.

Sullivan encouraged faculty to mingle. “I hope you meet someone you don’t know,” she said. “There are so many interesting people at the University, and we don’t always get to meet the ones who aren’t in our own department.”

Shilpa Davé, an assistant professor of media studies and author of “Indian Accents; Brown Voices and Racial Performance in American Television and Film” found company speaking with a colleague, lecturer Manuela Achilles of the history department who co-edited “Environmental Sustainability in Transatlantic Perspective: A Multidisciplinary Approach.” The latter volume was an example of interdisciplinary work within U.Va., as Achilles edited the work with Dana Elzey, an associate professor in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

“As a scholar, I’m curious what other people are researching,” Davé said. “It’s a wonderful idea to be able to celebrate research work.”

Faculty found themselves gravitating toward the display of books, which Sullivan referred to as a “wonderful feast from different subjects.”

The books sparked conversations between faculty who hadn’t met one another until then, but who were brought together while browsing titles and pages that sat alongside their own scholarly accomplishments. “This is great –we should all hang out around the books,” Sullivan said.

Some faculty shared that they wrote their books because they saw the need for such a work in their fields and in the classroom.

Associate professor Petra Reinke of the Engineering School and Professor Ed Burton of the Department of Economics, who wrote “Inorganic Nanoscience” and “Behavioral Finance,” respectively, are two who saw such a need.

Burton said his book grew out of teaching the subject. “It is the only book out” in behavioral finance, he said.

Similarly, Reinke wrote her book after a nanoscience presentation. “At the time I was teaching a new course on nanoscience,” she said. “There were no good books. There was nothing out there that really worked for me. I took what I had developed for the class and developed the book from there.”  

As an author of multiple books, Sullivan recognizes the time and energy required to complete a book. “Often at the end of the long day of teaching and interacting with students you go back to the labor of love, which is your book,” she said.

Patrick Tolan, a professor in the Curry School of Education, related to Sullivan. “For people like me, books are an effort of love and interest; they don’t get you ahead,” he said. “Publications and journals are the most important.”

Yet, the idea of bringing a group of people together with different ideas to create the start of what will become a series of books titled “Advances in Development and Psychopathology: Brain Research Foundation Symposium Series” is something that Tolan acknowledges is crucial to the discussion of changes and advances in his field.

While Tolan’s project was a joint effort of professionals, Liz Alexander, an associate professor of religious studies, spent eight years individually researching and writing her book, “Gender and Timebound Commandments in Judaism.” Her book coincidently was released as recent debate reignited in the Jewish community over gender roles, specifically related to the use of “tefillin,” a Jewish armband that contains scripture and is worn by men during their morning prayers.

“You have these ideas and you think, ‘This is valuable and useful,’ but they are in your own thoughts,” Alexander said. “Now it is finally out there and the reception has been great. After all the labor, it is very gratifying to get that affirmation back.”

Sullivan began celebrating faculty authors four years ago, upon arriving at U.Va.

“I felt that this kind of recognition for faculty who spend a long time putting out a book is worth it,” she said. “A book may take people three, five, seven years; it is a lot of work. But a lot of U.Va.’s scholarly reputation rests on the fact that we are a very good book-publishing faculty.”

More than 100 U.Va. faculty members were published in the past year, and more than 50 of them joined Sullivan to celebrate.

U.Va. Authors Honored at 2014 Book Reception

  • Abbasy-Asbagh, Ghazal (Architecture): “Catalyst”
  • Achilles, Manuela (History): “Environmental Sustainability”
  • Alday, Iñaki (Architecture): “Catalyst”
  • Alexander, Elizabeth (Religious Studies): “Gender & Timebound Commandments in Judaism”
  • Alison, Jane (Creative Writing): “Change Me: Stories of Sexual Transformation From Ovid”
  • Amaya, Hector (Media Studies): “Citizenship Excess”
  • Bagley, Margo (Law): “International Patent Law and Policy “
  • Baird, Ileana (English): “Eighteenth-Century Thing Theory in a Global Context: From Consumerism to Celebrity Culture”
  • Baker, Peter (English): “Honour, Exchange, and Violence in Beowulf”
  • Bennett, Benjamin (Germanic Languages and Literatures): “Aesthetics as Secular Millennialism: Its Trail from Baumgarten and Kant to Walt Disney and Hitler”
  • Berne, Rosalyn (Engineering & Society): “When the Horses Whisper”
  • Bonnie, Richard (Law): “Essentials of Public Health Ethics”
  • Brandt-Pearce, Maite (Electrical and Computer Engineering): “Cross-Layer Design in Optical Networks”
  • Bryant, Robert (Chemistry): “Chemistry, Strategic Paths to Understanding”
  • Burton, Ed (Economics): “Behavioral Finance: Understanding the Social, Cognitive, and Economic Debates”
  • Calhoun, Benton (Electrical & Computer Engineering): “Design Principles for Digital Cmos Integrated Circuit Design”
  • Callahan, Carolyn (Education): “Critical Issues in Gifted Education: What the Research Says”
  • Carlson, W. Bernard (Engineering and Society): “Tesla”
  • Ceaser, James (Politics): “After Hope and Change “
  • Clark, Amy (U.Va.’s College at Wise): “Talking Appalachian”
  • Collins, Michael (Law): “Transnational Civil Litigation”
  • Connolly, Julian (Slavic): “Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov Readers Guide”
  • Coppock, Lee (Economics): “Principles of Economics”
  • Crosby, Everett (History Emeritus): “The King's Bishops: The Politics of Patronage in England and Normandy, 1066-1216”
  • Davé, Shilpa (Media Studies): “Indian Accents”
  • Dianina, Katia (Slavic Languages and Literatures): “When Art Makes News: Writing Culture and Identity in Imperial Russia”
  • Edmundson, Mark (English): “Why Teach?”
  • Eisler, Matthew (Engineering): “Overpotential”
  • and  (Materials Science and Engineering): “Environmental Sustainability in Transatlantic Perspective: A Multidisciplinary Approach”
  • Fatton, Robert (Politics): “Haiti: Trapped in the Outer Periphery”
  • Felski, Rita (English): “Comparison”
  • Ferster, Bill (Education): “Interactive Visualization: Insight Through inquiry. ”
  • Fiorani, Francesca (Art): “Leonardo da Vinci and Optics”
  • Fisher, Mary Alice (Education): “The Ethics of Conditional Confidentiality”
  • Gallagher, Gary (History): “Becoming Confederates”
  • Gangloff, Richard (Materials Science and Engineering): “Gaseous Hydrogen Embrittlement of Materials in Energy Technologies:  The Problem, Its Characterization, and Effects on Particular Alloy Classes”
  • Gangloff, Richard (Materials Science and Engineering): “Gaseous Hydrogen Embrittlement of Materials in Energy Technologies:  Mechanisms, Modelling and Future Developments”
  • Garrett, Brandon (Law): “Federal Habeas Corpus: Executive Detention and Post-Conviction Litigation”
  • Gingerich, Daniel (Politics): “Political Institutions and Party-Directed Corruption in South America: Stealing for the Team “
  • Harold, Claudrena (History): “The Punitive Turn”
  • Hart, Kevin (Religious Studies): “The Essential Writings of Jean-Luc Marion”
  • Holsinger, Bruce (English): “A Burnable Book”
  • Howe, James (Materials Science and Engineering): “Transmission Electron Microscopy and Diffractometry of Materials”
  • Jenkins, Willis (Religious Studies): “The Future of Ethics: Sustainability, Social Justice, and Religious Creativity “
  • Johnson, Alex (Law): “Understanding Modern Real Estate Transactions “
  • Kett, Joseph (History): “Merit”
  • Kinney, Anne (East Asian Languages): “Exemplary Women of Early China”
  • Kretsinger, Robert (Biology): “Encyclopedia of Metalloproteins”
  • Liedtka, Jeanne (Darden): “Solving Problems And Design Thinking: Ten Stories Of What Works”
  • Lin, Zongli (Engineering): “Control of Surge in Centrifugal Compressors By Active Magnetic Bearings”
  • Livingood, James (English): “Best New Poets 2013”
  • Lloyd, John (Education): “Research-Based Approaches for Assessment”
  • LoLordo, Antonia (Philosophy): “Locke’s Moral Man”
  • Marsh, Charles (Religious Studies): “Mobilizing for the Common Good”
  • Maus, Katharine (English ): “Being and Having in Shakespeare”
  • McCormick-Ray, M. Gerry (Environmental Sciences): “Marine Conservation: Science, Policy and Management “
  • McDowell, Deborah (English): “The Punitive Turn”
  • McKenna, Michael (Education): “Cracking the Common Core: Choosing and Using Texts in Grades 6-12 ”
  • McKinnon, Susan (Anthropology): “Vital Relations”
  • McLaren, John (Economics): “International Trade”
  • Meyer, Elizabeth (History): “The Inscriptions of Dodona”
  • Midelfort, Erik (History Emeritus): “Witchcraft, Madness, Society, and Religion in Early Modern Germany”
  • Moon, Tonya (Education): “Assessment and Student Success in a Differentiated Classroom”
  • Murrie, Daniel (Med. Ctr., Psychiatry): “Juvenile Sex Offenders”
  • O'Neal, Chris  (SCPS): “Data-Driven Decision Making”
  • O’Shaughnessy, Andrew (History): “Men Who Lost America”
  • Operé, Fernando (Spanish): “Around the World in 80 Poems”
  • Orr, Gregory (English): “Rivers Inside the River”
  • Pandya, Sonal (Politics): “Trading Spaces: Foreign Direct Investment Regulation, 1970-2000”
  • Parker, Deborah (Italian): “Inferno Revealed: From Dante to Dan Brown”
  • Patek, Stephen (Systems & Information Engineering): “Book Modeling Methodology for Physiology and Medicine, 2nd Edition,” co-author, Chapter 11
  • Patel, Geeta (Women, Gender & Sexuality): “Gendering the Global Nation”
  • Patel, Geeta (Women, Gender & Sexuality): “Speculate This!”
  • Pinyan, Matthew (Architecture): “Catalyst”
  • Perry, Barbara (Miller Center): “Rose Kennedy”
  • Polillo, Simone (Sociology): “Conservatives Versus Wildcats: A Sociology of Financial Conflict”
  • Portmann, John (Religious Studies): “The Ethics of Sex & Alzheimer’s”
  • Ramazani, Jahan (English Dept.): “Poetry & Its Others”
  • Ramazani, Ruhi (Politics Emeritus): “K. Independence Without Freedom”
  • Ray, G. Carleton (Environmental Science): “Marine Conservation: Science, Policy and Management “
  • Reinke, Petra (Materials Science and Engineering): “Inorganic Nanostructures: Properties and Characterization”
  • Rinaldo, Rachel (Sociology): “Mobilizing Piety”
  • Ruhm, Christopher (Leadership & Public Policy): “Time Off With Baby: The Case for Paid Care Leave”
  • Rutherglen, George (Law): “Transnational Civil Litigation”
  • Sabato, Larry (Politics Dept.): “The Kennedy Half Century”
  • Savage, James (Politics): “Reconstructing Iraq’s Budgetary Institutions: Coalition Statebuilding After Saddam”
  • Seidelmann, Ken (Astronomy): “Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Almanac”
  • Shah, Sunit (Economics): “Behavioral Finance: Understanding the Social, Cognitive, and Economic Debates”
  • Smith, Tyler Jo (Art): “The Companion to Greek Art”
  • Spaar, Lisa Russ (Creative Writing): “The Hide and Seek Muse”
  • Spacks, Patricia (English): “Sense & Sensibility (Annotated Edition)”
  • Sprigman, Christopher (Law): “The Knockoff Economy: How Imitation Sparks Innovation”
  • Stanton-Chapman, Tina (Education): “Preschool Children: Education, Social Functioning, and Behavioral Issues”
  • Suarez, Michael (Rare Books School): “The Book”
  • Sullivan, Patricia Suzanne (English): “Experimental Writing in Composition: Aesthetics and Pedagogies “
  • Thompson, Elizabeth (History): “Justice Interrupted: The Struggle for Constitutional Government in the Middle East”
  • Thuan, Trinh (Astronomy): “Desir d'Infini (Desire of Infinity)”
  • Tolan, Patrick (Education): “Advances in Development and Psychopathology: Brain Research Foundation Symposium Series, Volume I: Disruptive Behavior Problems”
  • Tomlinson, Carol  (Education): “Assessment and Student Success in a Differentiated Classroom”
  • Trindle, Carl (Chemistry): “Theoretical and Computational Aspects of Magnetic Organic Molecules”
  • Varon, Elizabeth (History): “Secession Winter”
  • Varon, Ellizabeth (History): “Appomattox”
  • White, G. Edward (Ted) (Law): “American Legal History: Very Short Intro”
  • Wilson, Richard Guy (Architecture): “Public Nature”
  • Wolf, Stuart (Materials Science and Engineering): “Superconducting State: Mechanisms and Properties”
  • Zhigilei, Leonid (Materials Science and Engineering): “Lasers in Materials Science”

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