On Sept. 11, the ninth anniversary of the worst attack on American soil since the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Dr. Adrienne Redd, Adjunct Professor of Sociology, releases her new book, Fallen Walls and Fallen Towers: The Fate of the Nation in a Global World. The book discusses how to make sense of international catastrophes and transitions of the past two decades—starting from the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, through the events of Sept. 11, 2001, and beyond.

In the introduction, Redd notes, “This book argues that to survive globalization the nation-state must evolve beyond the institution’s early conception in the 17th century. Specifically, I urge society to collectively re-imagine the following four historical properties of the nation-state: sovereignty, boundedness, unity and modernity.”

Redd also focuses on the ways in which global events are eroding and pressuring traditional political institutions. Her book, however grim the topic remains, offers an affirmative rather than apocalyptic perspective of the way in which the public and political leaders need to re-think the organization of the world. Read more.

Dr. Peter Appelbaum, Professor and Coordinator of Mathematics Education and Curriculum Studies at Arcadia University, was recently elected to a three-year term as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies.

In the July 2010 issue of the Journal for the Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies (Vol. 6), Appelbaum proposes a new form of curriculum theorizing, “retrodictive curriculum reform,” as a response to the “endless cycles of fads and policies.”

In retrodictive reform, educators imagine a future for schooling and then work backwards to write a possible history for how society managed to make the imagined future happen. In the process they create a roadmap for how to implement long-term reform in the context of short-term crises and deadlines. Read more. 

“Bill Gates is Wrong. College Campuses Will Not Fade Away,” writes Larry Atkins, Adjunct Professor of Journalism, on Aug. 25 for the Huffington Post. “Earlier this month, billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates predicated at a technology conference in Lake Tahoe, Calif., that in five years, place-based colleges will be significantly less important due to technology.”

“As reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education and others, Gates said, ‘Five years from now on the Web for free you’ll be able to find the best lectures in the world. It will be better than any single university. College, except for the parties, need to be less place-based,’” writes Atkins.

Atkins writes that he is “aware of the value of online learning, but I still strongly believe in the value of place-based colleges.” Read more.

Abbey Ryan ’03, an alum and an Adjunct Professor of Art, was featured in a four-person exhibition titled Affinity in June at the Mount Airy Contemporary Artists Space in Philadelphia.

“Artist couples often share ties that resonate deeply in their professional practice as well as their personal lives,” says the Mount Airy Contemporary Artists Space website. “This exhibition explores the work of four artists and the way their work is intertwined. Hillerbrand+Magsamen are a Texas-based collaborative team that use video and installation to explore concepts of interpersonal space, memory and family dynamic. Abbey Ryan and Jury Smith are Philadelphia-based artists who share a fascination with process and layering, expressed in very different mediums. “Drawing from her ‘A Painting a Day’ still life project as groundwork, Abbey Ryan has been developing a body of work that explores the conceptual and visual relationship between figure and ground, contour and space. Working with ink, she chooses shapes that, to her, are reminiscent of a spiritual icon. The shapes are repeated and averaged; often, this distillation makes the shapes not visually distinct enough to define. Each layer of washed ink is the same value and color. The multiple contours and value variations are the result of shifting layers of the image; akin to the phenomenon of studying a still life object until it glows out of focus.” Read more at www.mountairycontemporary.com.

Ryan’s work has been written about in dozens of print and web publications, including Seth Godin’s most recent bestseller, Linchpin, and posts about her “A Painting a Day” project on BoingBoing. In conjunction with her Painting a Day project, her work is in hundreds of private and public collections all over the world.

(Photo: www.mountairycontemporary.com)

Michelle Tooker ’07, Marketing Writer for University Relations, recently had poems published in the Foundling Review and Gutter Eloquence. Her work also is forthcoming in The Schuylkill Valley Journal and The Ampersand. Read her poem “Storm Speak” here.

Tooker graduated with a bachelor’s in Print and Video Communications and is currently in the Master’s of Arts in English program. She recently completed her first chapbook-length collection under the guidance of Adjunct Professor Jeff Ingram. In the fall, she will begin her Master’s Thesis and plans to complete a poetry manuscript focused on the adventures and misadventures of traveling.

“The creative writing courses at Arcadia, both on the undergraduate and graduate level, have really helped me to hone my craft,” says Tooker. “Not only have I been able to work with some great professors like Dr. Wertime and Professor Ingram, but I’ve also made a lot of local literary connections. In May, I read in the Light of Unity Series, which is organized by Tamara Oakman ’10M, and I’m also in a writer’s group with some fellow graduate students and recent alumni. I would have never met these other talented writers or expanded my skills without Arcadia.”

By Heather C. Mick ’11

As part of the creative portion of her Capstone Project, Amie Zimmerman ’10 created an exhibit that explored physical abnormalities stemming from gene mutations. As a Scientific Illustration major, Zimmerman focused on the medical and ethical treatment of individuals born with birth defects. From the research she conducted, Zimmerman utilized digital paintings, sculptures, and molds to recreate the physical anomalies that were popularized during the Victorian era.

“My exhibition is a recreation of a collection of specimens based on freak shows that were highly popular during the Victorian Era,” says Zimmerman. “Each specimen reflects one of the five conditions I focused I on: hypertrichosis, craniopagus parasiticus, primordial dwarfism, human horn growth, and Proteus Syndrome.  These recreations remind us of an era when some people were looked at as specimens, not individuals, and who were collected and exploited everyday of their lives for profit.” Read more.

By Heather C. Mick ’11

On Friday, April 30, undergraduate Art and Design students at Arcadia University presented their senior Capstone Projects. Among those presenting was Ashley Cooksley ’10, an Interior Design student whose project was inspired by factories and laboratories, gears, buttons, tubes, knobs, and conveyer belts. As part of the task, Cooksley was charged with converting a 16,000-square-foot restaurant and residential space into an animation studio for a small animation company that specializes in traditional and flash animation.

“The most difficult part was working with my building because of the actual structure. I had seven floors to work with, and the building was an irregular shape,” says Cooksley.  “I also had to deal with an odd placement of structural columns and work with the windows to create a space that was both aesthetically pleasing and fully functional.” Read more.