SummEr/FAll 2011 - Nazareth College

NEWS|views
Globalization and Culture Conference Features Student Work
Keynote speaker Jeremy
[Hannah
Scahill
Tinti
during
© Maria.jpg]
the roundtable
discussion.
Nazareth College hosted
the interdisciplinary event
Globalization and Culture: An
Undergraduate and Graduate
Student Conference last
spring. The first of its kind for
the College, the conference
featured three concurrent
sessions and 173 studentpresenters
sharing their research
and civic engagement
projects, as well as artistic
performances in the form
of scholarly papers, roundtable
discussions, and poster
presentations. Celebrating
their curricular and co-curricular achievements, students learned about
presenting at and attending an academic conference.
The conference was designed by its organizers—Clare Counihan,
Ph.D. (English); Otieno Kisiara, Ph.D. (Anthropology); and Yamuna
Sangarasivam, Ph.D. (Anthropology) —to reflect the mission and
strategic initiatives of the College. They identified globalization and
culture as a theme to showcase student research that contributes
to the goal of preparing students to make a difference as members
of plural societies while making connections between local and
global communities.
The conference featured keynote speaker Jeremy Scahill, an awardwinning
investigative journalist and author of Blackwater: The Rise of
the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, who spoke to a packed
audience in the Shults Center Forum. Students and community members
also joined a roundtable discussion that included Scahill, Sangarasivam,
Nazareth College President Daan Braveman, Harry Murray,
Ph.D. (Sociology and Anthropology), Dr. Karen Hall (Syracuse University),
and Jon Sheldon ’13 (Marine combat veteran). Other highlights
were a plenary lecture and performances by a spoken-word artist and
a playwright/actress.
“The success of this conference was due to it being truly a campuswide
collaboration,” says Sangarasivam. Contributors included Nazareth
College’s centers; all four schools; the Offices of Student Development,
Academic Affairs, and Multicultural Affairs; Honors Program,
First Year Center; Undergraduate Association Diversity Council; and
Lorette Wilmot Library.
To learn more about the conference please visit go.naz.edu/global
Award-Winning Author Visits Campus
by Carly Maldonado ’12
For the second year in a
row, Nazareth welcomed a
renowned author to campus
as part of Writers & Books’
annual program If All of Rochester
Read the Same Book …. This spring,
Hannah Tinti, author of the Dickensian-inspired
novel The Good Thief,
spoke to an audience that filled the
Shults Center Forum, despite the
four inches of snow that had fallen
that day. (Typical Rochester!) Tinti
shared her wisdom with all the
Hannah Tinti
event attendees; however, the
theme of her presentation was especially applicable to the
Nazareth students in the audience.
Tinti spoke at length about her background and the extent to
which her childhood and her hometown of Salem, Massachusetts,
have influenced not only the plot of her novel but her writing
career as a whole. She told a story about seriously injuring her
left hand while playing in a graveyard as a child. She then continued
on to say that, although she did not consciously think of this
experience when she decided that the protagonist of The Good
Thief would be missing a left hand, this occurrence undoubtedly
had a subconscious effect on her and her writing.
As college students, we are in a stage of life where we are moving
out of our childhood homes and away from our parents and
families, trying to find our own way in life. The reminder that the
experiences that we had growing up and that the way we were
raised will have influences on what major we choose, what career
we pursue, and how we respond to life’s challenges, is one that is
always worth hearing again. And for our most recent reminder of
that fact, we can thank Hannah Tinti.
Carly Maldonado ’12 is a communication sciences and disorders
major at Nazareth.
8 CONNECTIONS | Summer/Fall 2011 www.naz.edu