Program Updates Fall 2009
This section highlights the talk by Edward Gamarra, details on the grant that MALS received last academic year, and updates on professors involved with MALS. Read more »
Updated 8.31.2009
This section highlights the talk by Edward Gamarra, details on the grant that MALS received last academic year, and updates on professors involved with MALS. Read more »
We would like to welcome several new students to the MALS Community. These students joined the program in Spring or Fall 2009. Read more »
Elaine Corum, a 2005 graduate of MALS, agreed to talk to us about her life after the MALS Program. Elaine also holds an MA in Psychology. She is currently a full-time instructor of writing at UCA. Read more »
Our alums continue to research and present in their various fields. Learn more about their presentations and awards. Read more »
Read more about recent student achievements. Read more »
Dear MALS alums, students, faculty & friends,
We are happy to share our Fall 2008 newsletter with you – we hope you’ll enjoy reading it. Features include an interview with a new faculty member at UALR who has years of experience with Liberal Studies, and updates from MALS alums. Please share this newsletter with your colleagues, friends, and family – we want to spread the word about our unique program and community here at UALR.
The Fall semester is now under way, and in this edition we’ll take time to look back and congratulate our Spring and Summer 2008 graduates and look forward to some events to come, including two lectures by Dr. Edward Gamarra (Ph.D. in Liberal Arts)–details can be found below in the Events section. Current students and faculty are invited to the MALS Gathering, a drop-in meeting and get-together on 9/16, from 4:30pm-6:30pm, in DSC-G.
Don’t forget that the MALS e-newsletter will come out 2 times a year and will include:
This edition we would like to turn our “Faculty Spotlilght” to a new member of the UALR faculty, Dr. Jeanette Clausen, who joined us in 2007 as Chair of the Department of International and Second Languages. Dr. Clausen has years of experience, however, including work with Liberal Studies MA programs.
Dr. Clausen guest-taught a class session for the Liberal Studies Colloquium in Spring 2008, devoted to the novel she translated (see below), and we look forward to more collaboration with her. Recently, she was interviewed by Angela Hunter, MALS Coordinator.
Jeanette Clausen, Professor of German and Chair of the Department of International and Second Language Studies; Phd in German Linguistics, Indiana University.
Hunter: Please share with our readers a little about your academic background and research interests.
Clausen: My PhD is in Germanic linguistics – historical and comparative linguistics actually, which is in a way the “archaeology” of language. After finishing my degree I became especially interested in women writers of the [then] German Democratic Republic—Christa Wolf, Helga Königsdorf, Irmtraud Morgner—and some of my publications reflect that. Early on I also gravitated toward editing and translation. Most of my editing (an anthology, several journal issues) was done collaboratively, and I value immensely the growth as a writer that I experienced. With translation, I learned that in order to do literary translation, one has to have a sense of and appreciation for literary language. But my training in linguistics was a great help, too, because linguistics, like math or symbolic logic, forces you to think systematically. My most significant translation is Irmtraud Morgner’s Life and Adventures of Trobadora Beatrice as Chronicled by her Minstrel Laura (Nebraska, 2000), a complex and multi-layered novel characterized by multiple story lines and story tellers, fantasy, humor, irony, defiance of convention, and a mixture of several genres. I hope to do another major translation at some point, but for now, I’m staying with shorter projects, such as the special focus section on West German feminist Alice Schwarzer that I did last winter for Feminist Europa, an online book review journal published in Germany—but in English!
Hunter: What are your teaching interests? What is one of your favorite classes to teach?
Clausen: I love to teach German language classes at all levels. It’s a challenge to adapt my teaching to individual students to help them be successful. One of my favorite courses to teach at my former university was Methods of Teaching Foreign Languages, which gave me the opportunity to work with student teachers. Whatever the method, there is always a need for creativity on the teacher’s part. The opportunity to be creative is actually what I love most about all my work—in literary translation, in teaching, and, yes, in administration too. I’m hoping to create some new courses while at UALR, perhaps one on women writers, or minority authors in German-speaking countries, and possibly one on texts that are “not your grandmother’s genre”: graphic novels, detective fiction, cartoons. Germany has some wonderful feminist cartoonists!
Hunter: You have quite a bit of experience with graduate Liberal Studies; could you tell us about that aspect of your career?
Clausen: At my former university, I was lucky enough to serve on the committee that developed the proposal for a Master of Liberal Studies degree and, once it had passed through all the levels of approval, to become the first director of the program, to implement it more or less from scratch. This meant recruiting faculty to teach the required interdisciplinary seminars, identifying courses for cross-listing, recruiting students, developing and implementing policies, and more. Our MLS Program didn’t require a thesis; instead, students could do a project that suited their interests—creative writing, research projects, materials development for a course or curriculum they were working on, performances, and so on. Directing this program was a very rewarding experience for me, both in terms of working with faculty from many disciplines and helping to advise students with such a wide range of interests.
Hunter: What is your view on interdisciplinary studies?
Clausen: Interdisciplinary Studies seems to be something people either love or hate. I love it, find it very enriching, and think it should be given more importance in both undergraduate and graduate education. After all, in “Life after Graduation,” we aren’t separated by discipline and in fact will most likely have to work closely with colleagues whose academic or professional training has a very different orientation—it’s almost a different culture from one discipline to another sometimes. I think that some who oppose interdisciplinary studies are concerned that students will come out with only a superficial knowledge of the disciplines they encounter, lacking any sense of methodological rigor or depth of subject matter. That’s a legitimate concern, but it’s not inevitable. I hope to work with colleagues in several disciplines at UALR to create a more truly interdisciplinary German Studies Program. We’ll see how that goes!
Hunter: Do you have any advice for MALS students who are beginning to write theses and getting ready to graduate?
Clausen: For your thesis or final project, go with something you are truly interested in, but be sure to challenge yourself—go outside your comfort zone to bring a new dimension to your topic or area of interest. Prepare for the next step after graduation by reflecting on how you will present your unique, individualized master’s degree as evidence of who you are and what you have to offer an employer. And, most important: have fun every day!
Congratulations to the recent graduates of the MALS program!
SPRING 2008
Jayme Butts-Hall: (History, Political Science), “Turning Compassion into Action: Animal Welfare in Little Rock, Arkansas”
Shannon Caldwell: (Rhetoric, Communication), “Communicating with the World One Moment at a Time: Teachable Moments with Bill Clinton”
George Lea: (History, Political Science), “Taylor Field: A Diamond in the Rough”
Samuel Onyegam: (Political Science, Rhetoric), “Historical Comparative Case Study of Emerging Hegemonic Behavior: Perspectives on the Peoples Republic of China”
Jane Rampona: (Psychology, Social Work), “Psycho-sexual Politics of Life on the Streets: Narratives of Homeless Women and Women Who Experienced Homelessness as Children”
SUMMER 2008
Regina Gibson (Gerontology, Health Science), “Physicians’ Communication with Older Patients, Particularly Older African American Women About Sexual Health and Sexual Risk Behaviors for Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS)”
Larry Lachowsky: (Philosophy, Higher Education), “Professionalism and Ethics for the Arkansas Land Surveyor”
MALS graduates continue to take on new and exciting challenges! We are very interested in keeping contact with our alums, and we are doing our best to find you all! Please keep the MALS Program updated with your current physical and email addresses.
Melvin Beavers (06) will be pursuing a PhD in English (emphasis on Rhetoric and Popular Culture) at the University of Texas-Arlington in Fall 2008. Recently Melvin presented two papers:
Jayme Butts-Hall (08) will be attending Bowen School of Law in Fall 2008. She presented research from her final project, dealing with animal welfare in Little Rock, to the Little Rock Animal Advisory Board in April, 2008. She was invited by the Humane Society of the United States to assist in the seizure of 91 dogs from an animal sanctuary in Stuttgart, Arkansas.
Regina Gibson (08) won a “Special Recognition Award” at the 2008 National Women of Color Technology Awards Conference. She was also inducted into Alpha Epsilon Lambda, the National Honor Society for Graduate Students in May 2008.
Debby Hreczkosij (07) wrote an article to be published in Atlanta Parent Magazine, entitled “Come on? Vamonos? Let’s Get Real!” The article is about how Dora the Explorer is setting up children for failure when it comes to tackling their problems.
Steven Jauss (00) co-edited (with Green and Donovan) Global Bioethics: Issues of Conscience for the Twenty-first Century, forthcoming from Oxford University Press in November, 2008. He also published:
Samuel Oneygam (08) will be attending the Thomas M. Cooley School of Law at the University of Michigan-Lansing, in January 2009. He will focus on International Law.
Jane Rampona (08) wrote a nonfiction essay for Quills and Pixels entitled “What Happens to Homeless Women.”
Welcome to all of our newly admitted students in Spring 2008 and Fall 2008!
They are: Charlotte Fowler, Lori Gardner, Natalie Griffin, Kathryn Hudson, Keith Klosky, Jake Lewis, Shirley Pence, and Rohn Muse. From Anthropology to Music to Rhetoric to Social Work, MALS students continue to create interesting interdisciplinary pathways.
We have two new Graduate Assistants working for the program as well: Natalie Griffin (nfgriffin@ualr.edu) and Justin Sangster (jgsangster@ualr.edu). Feel free to contact them for help or information.
If you know someone interested in a unique and challenging educational opportunity, please let them know about MALS–we’d be happy to meet with individuals or give presentations to groups about the program.
The application deadline for Spring 2009 is October 15th, 2008. Contact the GAs or the Program Coordinator for more information.
Two Lectures on Thursday, September 25th, 2008
Dr. Edward Gamarra will be visiting our campus to give two lectures that should be of great interest to the Liberal Studies community. Dr. Gamarra received a PhD in Liberal Arts (Emory University), completing interdisciplinary research in Film and Psychoanalysis.
Dr. Gamarra currently works as a literary manager in Los Angeles, representing screenwriters, producers, animators and illustrators (among others). Dr. Gamarra will give an academic lecture and also a talk about his career path.
12:15pm (Location TBA): “What the heck is a ‘multi-hyphenate’ and why do I need to be one?
Dr. Gamarra will discuss how he went from Liberal Arts to Hollywood and what it means for your job hunt. He will share information about his career and explain how skills and knowledge from his academic background matter.
7:00pm (Stabler Hall, 109): “Arrested Development: Film Comedy and the Psychodynamics of Humor”
Incorporating film clips from classic and contemporary comedies, Dr. Gamarra will discuss how a psychoanalytic approach to child development yields a new theory of humor.
These events are co-sponsored by Philosophy and Liberal Studies, Mass Communications, Psychology Club, Donaghey Scholars Program, and the AHSS College.
For more information, contact us at 569-3312 or email Natalie Griffin at nfgriffin@ualr.edu.
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This is our second e-newsletter, and we hope you enjoy it! Thanks for the feedback you provided about the Spring 2007 edition, and, as always, if you have suggestions of things we should include in the future, don’t hesitate to contact us. The Fall semester is now well under way, and in this edition we’ll take time to look back and congratulate our August 2007 graduates and look forward to some events still to come this fall. I’d like to thank everyone who attended our annual MALS Get Together and Informational Meeting earlier this week. It’s important to foster a sense of community among students and faculty, and we hope to see more of you at these events in the future. Information on other happenings of interest can be found below in the Events section. Don’t forget that the MALS e-newsletter will come out 3 times a year and will include:
What would you like to see? We are especially interested in keeping contact with our alums, and we are doing our best to find you all! Please keep the MALS Program updated with your current physical and email addresses.
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The MALS Advisory Group is a dedicated and energetic group of faculty who help guide the MALS Program, working on everything from admissions to assessment and policy formulation. They bring new ideas and new perspectives to the table, and help us advance interdisciplinary inquiry on campus. Join me in thanking them for all they do for MALS! Thanks to Earnest Cox, Victor Ellsworth, Mark Hartmann, Dan Holland, Laura Smoller, Marjorie Williams-Smith, and Paul Yoder. This edition we would like to turn our “Faculty Spotlilght” to the activities of some of the MALS Advisory Group members (below are the recent activities of the members who were able to respond by our deadline). |
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She is nearing completion of her book manuscript “The Saint and the Chopped-Up Baby: The Cult of Vincent Ferrer and the Religious Life of the Later Middle Ages,” to which end she spent much of the summer reading early Latin lives of the saintly fifteenth century Dominican preacher. This fall, she is teaching graduate courses in “Disease and Society from Antiquity to the Present” and “Apocalypse Now and Then: A History of Apocalyptic Thought and Movements.” |
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Dr. Marjorie Williams-Smith is pleased to announce the following art activities that she will have a part in: UALR Faculty Biennial Exhibition; UALR Gallery I; November 4, 2007 - January 14, 2008 Fifth Annual 5×5 Exhibition (group exhibition); Arts Center of the Ozarks; Springdale, Arkansas; September 28 - November 1, 2007 JUROR for the Central High School Exhibition: Looking Back Looking Ahead: Commemorating 50 Years of Integration; Cox Creative Center - Showcase Arkansas Gallery; Little Rock, Arkansas; September 14 - October 27, 2007 Six Arkansas Printmakers; Christ Episcopal Church; Little Rock, Arkansas; September 14 - November 4, 2007 Solo Exhibition: Silverpoint Drawings; Fort Worth Community Arts Center; Fort Worth, Texas; July 6 - August 18, 2007 57th Annual Art Competition (group exhibition); Fort Smith Art Center; Fort Smith, Arkansas; June 3-30, 2007 |
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Congratulations to the following graduates of the MALS program: |
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Areas of Study: English and Art History Thesis: "The Relationship of Art and Literature: A.S. Byatt, Kate Breakey, and Magic(al) Realism" |
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Angelic Saulsberry Areas of Study: English, Rhetoric, and Journalism Thesis: "Dropping the Soap: Finding and Defining the Soap Opera Genre in Contemporary Television" |
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Chuck Law Areas of Study: Music and Education Final Project: "A Model Curriculum for the Bachelor of Arts Percussioninst" |
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If you’re an alum and would like to send in news or noteworthy events, please contact us (anhunter@ualr.edu). |
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It is always exciting when a student’s hard work is recognized and rewarded. This edition we’d like to share with you a little bit about a current MALS student who received funding to help conduct her thesis research. Ms. Regina Gibson, who is completing an interdisciplinary project using the fields of Gerontology and Health Sciences, agreed to answer some questions about her research. |
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Major: Gerontology; Minor: Health Sciences Expected Graduation: May 2008 Committee Chairs: Professor Mark A Krain (major), School of Social Work; UALR Barbara Hager, MPH (minor) Section Chief; Comprehensive Cancer Control, AR Department of Health 1. What sort of funding did you receive for your research? In the process of preparing to conduct research for my thesis, I was fortunate enough to be pointed in the direction of those who felt my research had enough merit to be funded. 2. What is the focus of your research? My research is entitled “Physician Communication with Older Patients, Particularly Older African American Women, about Sexual Health and Sexual Risk Behaviors for Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS)." My research is designed to examine whether or not physicians (primary care, internal medicine, obstetrics, gynecologists, family and general practice), communicate with their older patients about sexual risk behaviors and HIV/AIDS, and whether or not they test their older patients for these diseases. This topic is of interest to me because the incidence of HIV/AIDS is increasing in this seldom thought to be at high-risk population (age 50 and older). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in the past few years, new AIDS cases rose faster in middle-aged and older people than in people under age 40 and most of these cases were due to becoming infected after age 50 rather than at an earlier age. The main mode in infection for this age group is through heterosexual sex. Older African American women are disproportionately affected by HIV/AIDS. It is questionable as to what primary care physicians may or may not be doing to educate and assess their older patients for HIV/AIDS. The literature does not support that this is being done on a routine basis, mostly due to age-stereotypes about older persons. In addition to providing information about what physicians in Arkansas are saying or not saying to their older patients about this subject, I anticipate that it will stimulate thought and action for physicians to get sexual histories on their older patients to determine if they practice high-risk sexual behaviors and to test them accordingly. 3. How did you go about getting the funding? At the outset I was hoping for a miracle. Dr. Krain and I had about exhausted sources for funding at the University. I had written a couple of letters to foundations but before I heard anything from them, my minor chair, Barbara Hager, suggested that I talk to Gary Horton, Section Chief of HIV/STD/Hepatitis C at the Arkansas Department of Health (ADH). She thought that the department may be interested in any data that the research provides. Apparently, physicians in Arkansas have not been queried before about their communication with older patients regarding sexual risk behaviors and HIV/AIDS. You might say that this research will be innovative for Arkansas. After a brief meeting, where I was prepared to request some assistance with funding, Mr. Horton and his staff offered to totally fund the research and reduce the funding by allowing me to do the copying and mail out at the HIV/STD Hepatitis C office. The return postage and questionnaire mail backs will also be going to this office. 4. How do you plan on using the funding? The HIV/STD/Hepatitis C Division at ADH is providing most of the funding support in in-kind. The funding left will support hiring a graduate student to transcribe responses received in an Excel file format for data analysis. 5. What advice do you have to give to MALS students who are just beginning the program? My advice is for new students to look at the disciplines they chose and begin from day one to think about a thesis statement encompassing the two. Gear your thesis statement to what you are interested in as you are going to be spending a lot of time with it. Do not become discouraged or anxious if you decide (after much research and deliberation) to change your thesis - that is okay. I think I must have changed my focus several times before it hit met that I was really interested in my current thesis topic. The more I read about older people, the more perspective I gained about the gaps in healthcare that were not being addressed. Lack of information about the consequences for high-risk sexual behaviors is not only an individual problem; it is also a community problem, but older people were not included in HIV/AIDS education and prevention messages. There are many possibilities out there, explore them. Being in an interdisciplinary degree program can be very exciting - you have two areas from which your thesis may emerge and you get to tie them together into something truly unique. |
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We accepted 5 students who began in Summer or Fall 2007 (for a total of 9 students admitted in 2007). Welcome to the new students—Gretchen England, Denies Gaskins, Crystal Hampton-West, Valerie Johnston, and Robin Sternweis. Do you have a friend, colleague or family member who is seeking a unique educational experience? If you know anyone who may be interested in MALS, please have them contact Dr. Hunter for information about the program. She is also available to give presentations about MALS at professional or club meetings. Help us spread the work about MALS! The deadline for consideration for admission in Spring 2008 is October 15, 2007. All application materials should be submitted to the Graduate School office. Contact the MALS office if you have questions about the admissions process. |
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RECENT AND UPCOMING EVENTS |
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Dear MALS alums, students, faculty & friends,
I’m excited to be sending you this inaugural issue of the MALS Newsletter! We hope this will be a wonderful tool for current students, alumns, faculty, and friends of the MALS Program to stay in touch with us and with each other. The newsletter will come out 3 times a year and will include things like:
We are especially interested in keeping contact with our alums, and we are doing our best to find you all! Please keep the MALS Program updated with your current physical and email addresses.
News: As some of you know, the Department of Philosophy and Liberal Studies moved! We’re still in Stabler Hall but now we’re on the third floor in a newly renovated space. We’re in Stabler Hall 307. The new office suite has a meeting/lounge area. I hope you’ll stop by and visit us! In addition, the interdisciplinary programs in the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences have some shared office and meeting space in Stabler Hall 409. This is where a MALS GA will be housed next academic year. As you can tell, support for interdisciplinary studies continues to grow at the university, and MALS is excited to be part of it.
I hope you enjoy this edition of our MALS newsletter!
For more information or to send us updates, please contact Prof. Angela Hunter, MALS Coordinator, at 501-683-7066 or via email at anhunter@ualr.edu.
This section will highlight a faculty person who contributes to the MALS Program. Dr. Paul Yoder agreed to be our first interview, and Angelic Saulsberry (MALS GA and student of Dr. Yoder) interviewed him recently.
Could you tell me about your educational background and how you first became interested in your field?
I have a BA in English from Louisiana State University (1980), an MA in English from Ohio State University (1983) and a PhD in English from Duke University (1992). I’ve always liked stories and poems, and sometime in high school I started thinking about the possibility of being a teacher. It seemed like a great way to make a living — reading and talking about what I read.
What made you decide to become a professor?
I’m a first generation college student, so the idea of being a college professor did not really occur to me until I was nearing the end of my BA. I started college as an English Education major, but I felt like I was not being allowed to take as many English classes as I wanted, so I took some time off, and when I went back to college I switched to an English major. I was in the honors program at LSU, and working more closely with the faculty there, I began to see that teaching college was a real possibility.
Could you give me examples of some the research you’ve completed over the years?
I just signed a contract with Edwin Mellen Press for my book on William Blake’s poem, Jerusalem. That has been the core of my work since grad school, but I’ve also published articles on John Milton’s poem “The Passion,” on Samuel Richardson’s novel Clarissa, and other articles on Thomas Gray and William Wordsworth, and I’ve co-edited two essay collections on Alexander Pope. I’m interested in literary history and in problems of narrative and self-consciousness in literature, so much of my research has been informed by these issues. In my work on Blake I have published on the relationship between Blake and Pope, and on Blake’s use of the Bible in his work. I am currently developing some new research on the Romantics’ engagement with John Locke’s Essay concerning Human Understanding.
What is your view on interdisciplinary studies?
As a Blake specialist I assume that interdisciplinarity will be part of my work. Blake was both a poet and a painter, and he incorporated both text and image into his work. In order to engage his work fully, you have to look at the interaction of image and text (what W. J. T. Mitchell calls Blake’s “composite art”), so I’ve always felt pretty comfortable with that sort of interdisciplinarity. Beyond Blake’s work, I’ve also been interested in visual aspects and visual imagery in literature, as well as the way that images can be made to tell stories — one might think of Hogarth’s series paintings here. My interest in literary history has also led me to breach historical disciplinary boundaries. I like to see how different literary periods talk to each other.
What advice do you have for MALS students working on their thesis or final projects?
Start early. Have fun. Stretch your imagination. Write a paragraph every day. I also suggest trying to find new ways to stimulate your own thoughts, to break out of your patterns of thought. I find that collages work well for me. Just collect images and scraps of text and put them next to each other. See what comes out.
Spring 2007 MALS Presentation Forum
MALS held its annual Presentation Forum on April 14, 2007. Graduating students presented brief presentations of their final projects and theses to an audience of their fellow students, faculty and guests. Each student in the MALS program is required to complete a final project or thesis to complete the program. The efforts of these students is the result of several years of coursework and research in their fields.
The event began with an introduction and welcome by MALS coordinator, Dr. Angela Hunter. This was followed by a presentation by student Larry Lachowsky titled “Ethics and Professionalism for the Arkansas Land Surveyor.” Lachowsky’s research combined his study areas of Philosophy and Higher Education, and focused on creating a professionalism and ethics course for the surveyor curriculum in the state.
Katie Butler, whose study areas include English and Art History, chose magical realism as the focus of her thesis. “A.S. Byatt and Kate Breakey: Literature, Art, and the Magical Real” is a comparison of the use of magical and magic realism in literature and art though the works of Byatt and Breakey.
Deborah Hreczkosij, a student of History, Rhetoric, and English, presented her thesis titled “The Great Depression: A Comparative Literature Examination Through the Use of Newbery Award Books.” Hreczkosij analyzed the American depression era of the 1930s by studying children’s books written during and about that time period.
After a brief intermission, George Lea presented his thesis “Taylor Field: A Diamond in the Rough.” Lea, whose areas of study are History and Political Science, presented his research detailing the extensive 68-year history of a beloved Pine Bluff ballpark.
Jane Rampona utilized her studies in Psychology and Social Work and her volunteer experiences for her thesis, “Psycho-Sexual Politics of Life on the Streets: Narratives of Homeless Women and Women who Experienced Homelessness as Children.” Rampona conducted research on homelessness and mental illness, and then conducted a series of interviews with homeless women in the Little Rock area.
The final presenter, Angelic Saulsberry, combined the areas of English, Rhetoric, and Journalism when researching her thesis “Dropping the Soap: Finding and Defining the Soap Opera Genre in Contemporary Television.” Saulsberry’s thesis involves an analysis of the soap opera television genre and its role in the contemporary television landscape.
Notice: 2007 Feminism(s) & Rhetoric Conference at UALR
This national conference will be held in Little Rock next October! It will be an exciting interdisciplinary opportunity for participants and attendees:
Drawing inspiration from the 50th anniversary of Central High’s integration, the Clinton Presidential Library, Heifer Project International & the Clinton School for Public Service, the conference will explore the question of Feminism(s), Rhetoric(s) and Civic Discourse.
The Double Tree Hotel
October 4-6, 2007
For conference information, go to http://femrhet.cwshrc.org/
We accepted 4 students who began in Spring 2007. Welcome to the new students—hope you had a great first semester! We are currently in the middle of another admissions cycle for Fall 2007 and look forward to welcoming more strong students into the program.
Do you have a friend, colleague or family member who is seeking a unique educational experience? If you know anyone who may be interested in MALS, please have them contact Dr. Hunter for information about the program. She is also available to give presentations about MALS at professional or club meetings. Help us spread the work about MALS!
Join us in congratulating our recent graduates!
Look for the summer graduates in our next newsletter!
These are a few recent accomplishments of current MALS students. If you’re a current student and you’d like us to showcase an accomplishment of yours, be sure to let us know.
Ever wonder what MALS students do after they graduate? Here is a sampling of current positions and noteworthy items about our MALS alums!
If you’re an alum and would like to send in news or noteworthy events (or if our below information is no longer current), please contact us (anhunter@ualr.edu)
Dr. Laura Smoller, Professor of History, has just published “Astrology and the Sibyls: John of Legnano’s De adventu Christi and the Natural Theology of the Later Middle Ages,” Science in Context 20:3 (2007): 423-50. The article is in a special issue of the journal entitled “Believing Nature, Knowing God,” which represents work carried out by members of the “Natural Theology” section of the research group, “Knowledge and Belief,” sponsored by the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, 2003-05. 
Dr. Mark Hartmann is Associate Professor of Anthropology. He continues to teach courses in Physical Anthropology including a graduate course in Forensic Anthropology and courses in Anthropological Theory (also at the graduate level) and archaeology and Egyptology. He has been working on the excavation of an historic cemetery in Missouri and studying Egyptian hieroglyphics in preparation for fieldwork in Egypt in the summer of 2008. Here is a link to his website: 
Dr. Paul Yoder has been keeping busy finishing his book, Blake’s Jerusalem and the Rhetoric of Discontinuity for Edwin Mellen Press. He is currently teaching a graduate course on “Four Literary Icons: Frankenstein, Sherlock Holmes, Dracula and Tarzan,” and will be teaching a new course in the Spring on “How to Read Poetry” for the William G. Cooper, Jr. Honors Program in English. Also in the Spring, Dr. Yoder will sit in as Acting Director of the Donaghey Scholars Program while Dr. Earl Ramsey is on Off-Campus Duty Assignment. You can check out some of Doc Yoder’s bird photographs at his “Yard Birds” page at 
Katie Butler
Regina V. Gibson, RN, BS, CHES, CCRP, Graduate Student, MALS Program