Sketches Are Stars at New Lincoln Center Art Show

What does the future hold for the sketch drawing, that integral link between imagination and reality? 

Sketch., a new show at the Lincoln Center’s Center Gallery, hopes to address that. 

Organized by Sandra McKee, adjunct assistant professor of architecture at Fordham, in association with New York-based curators d3, Sketch. opened on Feb. 18 and runs through March 19. A reception will be held Thursday, March 7 from 6 to 8 p.m.

The show, which is sponsored by Fordham’s theater and visual arts departments, seeks to revisit the use of classical sketching approaches, while engaging with the new technologies that have expanded the contemporary opportunities of sketching as a conceptual generator.  

Works on display include analog sketches, digital drawings, and digital images of sketch models.

Gallery organizers describe it thusly:

“Sketching is a fundamental and time-tested tool of design communication-- an intuitive practice that conveys ideas and assumptions rapidly and directly. With the rise of trans-disciplinary practices and digital methods, the conventional act of sketching has been profoundly transformed by a proliferation of diverse methodologies and emerging technologies.” 

“While the perception and notion of what constitutes a sketch continues to expand, many designers are reconsidering and expanding upon the historical role of sketching. This emerging dialogue reveals unparalleled synergies between 21st century innovation and classical tradition.”

The Center Gallery is open 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily. For more information, visit http://fordhamuniversitycentergallery.com/artwork/3032381_Sketch.html

—Patrick Verel

Recyclemania Challenge Nears Half Way Point

Three weeks into Recyclemania 2013, all the action in the competition to see which Fordham residents have a better knack for collecting cans, bottles and paper is confined to the northwest corner of the Rose Hill campus.

According to results released on Tuesday, Feb. 26 by consultant Wake Forest, Martyr’s Court, which recycled both the most glass, metal and plastic, and paper and cardboard in the first week of the competition, came out on top in the latter category this week, with .87 pounds of paper and cardboard per person. 

The residents of neighboring Salice-Conley Hall, on the other hand, took top honors in the glass/metal/plastic category this week, with .76 pounds per person. This was the second week residents there led in that category.

At the other end of the spectrum, the residents of Alumni Hall South managed to recycle the least amount of glass, metal and plastic (.37 pounds per person) and the least amount of paper and cardboard (.48 pounds per person). 

But hey, they also generated the least amount of trash of anyone on Rose Hill, with 4.09 pounds per person. As in past weeks, it was a trifle compared to the 2.79 pounds per person generated by the Lincoln Center campus residents who call McMahon Hall home. But it was still better than Martyr’s Court’s 6.41 pounds of trash generated by person.

Recyclemania continues through April 1. For more information, visit recyclemania.com.

—Patrick Verel

Wall Street Journal Follows Notorious Ph.D. Music Tour

The Wall Street Journal recently sent cameras to trail Professor Mark Naison, aka-The Notorious Ph.D., as he took a group of music afficionados on a trolley tour of Bronx music history. In what he referred to as the "three great traditions: Latin Caribbean, West Indian, and African American," Naison unabashedly blasted music from a boom box, provided thoroughly academic commentary, and rapped. "Nowhere else in the world were these three traditions together," said Naison, as the trolley swept past the home of jazz great Maxine Sullivan and a schoolyard considered "the single most important hiphop center."

Upcoming Panel at GSE Aims to Help Aspiring Educators in Today’s Job Market

An upcoming panel hosted by the Graduate School of Education (GSE) will examine new trends in education hiring and professional development, and how future educators can improve their marketability in this shifting field.

“Careers in Education Today: Developing, Updating, and Promoting Your Skills in Today’s Job Market”
Tuesday, March 5
6 p.m.
12th-Floor Lounge/Corrigan Conference Center | Lincoln Center Campus

A diverse panel of experts will discuss current trends in hiring, high needs areas and certifications, and trends in pedagogy and technology. Participants will learn about the skills that new hires need, and how both current and aspiring educators can stay current and marketable in the world of education.

Panelists include:

• Moderator Linda Horisk, assistant dean of admissions at GSE;
• James Hennessy, Ph.D., dean of GSE;
• Abigail Woods Ferreira, GSE career counselor;
• Rakeda Leaks, Ed.D., senior director of Teacher Recruitment and Applicant Services, of the New York City Department of Education;
• John Lee, Ed.D., clinical professor at GSE and vice chair of the Division of Educational Leadership, Administration and Policy; and
• Marilyn Terranova, Ph.D., superintendent of the Eastchester School District.

For more information, read the story on the GSE blog.

— Joanna Klimaski

Panel Queries the Global Role in Congolese Conflict

From left, Aimee Cox, Ph.D., Aseel Sawalha, Ph.D.,
Fawzia Mustafa, Ph.D., and Evelyn Bush, Ph.D.
Photo by Janet Sassi

Cell phones, computers, and electronics, the indispensable tools of modern life, don’t show any outward signs of the warzones that generate them.

Yet the mineral used to manufacture these devices has contributed to years of war in the Congo, where conflict over natural resources continues to decimate the land as well as its citizens.

Helping to shed light on the issue, Fordham’s Theatre Program is running the 2009 Pulitzer Prize winner Ruined as the third show of its 2012-13 mainstage season. Written by Lynn Nottage, Ruined is the story of four women struggling to survive in war-torn Eastern Congo, a region rife with abuses of human rights, especially sexual violence.

On Feb. 22, a panel of Fordham professors gathered on the Pope Auditorium stage for a discussion on the complex issues raised by Nottage’s play.

The panel featured:

• Moderator Aimee Cox, Ph.D., assistant professor of performance and African and African American studies;
• Aseel Sawalha, Ph.D., associate professor of anthropology;
• Fawzia Mustafa, Ph.D., associate professor of English and African and African American studies;
• And Evelyn Bush, Ph.D., associate professor of sociology.

With the militaristic set of Ruined providing a sinister backdrop for the panel, Cox explained that Eastern Congo provides 70 percent of the world’s supply of coltan, the mineral used in many electronic devices. The abundance of the mineral makes the Congo a magnet for civil conflict and corporate greed.

“In Ruined, we are compelled to question how a country that has been described as ‘the rape capital of the world’ becomes so through transnational capital flow and the exploitation of natural resources,” Cox said. “We are asked to consider how human life becomes devalued… [in part] through Western interest that believes that the right to trade is more powerful or valuable than the right to live.”

That capitalist mindset, Bush said, often pervades political discussion, seeps into media coverage, and then percolates down into public opinion. And though talk of independence from foreign oil has made headway in public discourse, the prospect of a similar outcome with coltan is dim.

“Coltan is the new oil,” Bush said. “It’s something that we’re building the entire infrastructure of our society around, so the stakes are incredibly high… And because of that, activism or movements in response are going to be very difficult.”

Meanwhile, as the war over resources drags on, civilians suffer. Hundreds of thousands of women have been caught up between warring factions since the conflict began in 1996. For Congolese women and girls of all ages, the threat of sexual violence is constant.

“In most wars, the rape of women is not for pleasure—it’s to punish the nation,” Sawalha said. “By contaminating the bodies of these women, the new generation that’s going to be produced because of it is contaminated as well.”

It leads us to ask why, in the face of overt violence, does the world not intervene, the panelists asked.

“We know an awful lot about what has happened and why,” Mustafa said. “But it continues. Nothing that we understand about this has stopped it from happening, even with the publicity, even with advocacy. It brings us back to the question of who benefits.

“You can pinpoint two culprits,” she continued. “One is the market as it functions right now, and the other is the ways in which patriarchy has become so horribly skewed in Africa.”

The panelists acknowledged that the evening’s discussions, as well as the play itself, do little to effect more than awareness and advocacy. Nevertheless, that is where justice must begin.

“It’s not about easy answers or coming to resolutions, but grappling with the various questions we find in the play,” Cox said.

Ruined continues this week on Feb. 27 through March 1 at 8 p.m. in Pope Auditorium. A post-show talkback exploring the artistic choices behind the play will take place on Feb. 28 in Pope Auditorium.

On April 10 and 11, Ruined playwright Lynn Nottage will be visiting both the Lincoln Center and Rose Hill campuses to discuss her play.

For more information about Ruined and the Theatre Program’s mainstage season, read the article in Inside Fordham.

— Joanna Klimaski

New Book from Fordham University Press Leads Media Rescue Mission

The success of a democracy hinges, in part, on the free flow of news and information.

And to maintain that flow of information, certain conditions need to be in place for the press. One of these conditions, theorists contend, is media pluralism, the existence of many, diverse media outlets that can present a cross section of news and a wide range of opinions.

That’s the theory—but is it working?

A new book coming out of Fordham’s Donald McGannon Communication Research Center and Fordham University Press argues that the concept of media pluralism has been stretched to suit different political purposes, reduced to empty catchphrases, and become mixed up with consumer choice and market competition.

According to Kari Karppinen, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Social Research at the University of Helsinki, Finland, the concept needs to be rescued.

In his book, Rethinking Media Pluralism (Fordham University Press, 2013), Karppinen explains that because of the breakdown of media pluralism, important questions about social and political values, democracy, and citizenship are ignored. Karppinen calls for a re-envisioning of media pluralism that puts the focus on challenging inequalities and creating a more democratic public sphere.

“Uncertainty or disagreement over how to conceptualize media pluralism is a persistent stumbling block in academic and policy debates,” said Natali Helberger, Ph.D., of the Institute for Information Law. “Tackling this difficult issue is an important, brave, and necessary exercise, and it is what this book does.”

The Donald McGannon Communication Research Center conducts, supports, rewards, and disseminates research that informs communications policymaking processes and ethical decision-making within media organizations.

Rethinking Media Pluralism marks the second volume in the Center’s Everett C. Parker Book Series, a series dedicated to the publication of research that addresses social and ethical issues in communication policy.

— Joanna Klimaski

Sixth Annual Subway Summit Makes a Stop Uptown

The Subway Summit on Cognition and Education Research marked its sixth annual gathering this year with a new stop on the subway—this time, uptown.

The summit, which has been taking place at Fordham since its 2008 launch, was held on Jan. 25 at Columbia University’s Teachers College, marking the beginning of a new rotating format.

“[The rotation] gives the conference longevity,” said summit co-founder William B. Whitten II, Ph.D., distinguished research scholar at the Graduate School of Education (GSE) and director of the Center for Learning in Unsupervised Environments (CLUE). “It shows a successful long-term contribution to the NYC area research community by Fordham.”

The summit began as a research exchange conference among local university faculty and graduate students from Fordham, Columbia, New York University, and the City University of New York Graduate Center. Rutgers University in New Jersey joined the summit in 2011, making the conference “a subway summit and light rail series,” Whitten said.

This year’s conference featured about 30 presentations on cognitive psychology/science and education from faculty, graduate students, and post-doctoral researchers. Topics included the use of multimedia to facilitate learning, the dynamics of collaborative learning, and designing more effective homework.

Intervals between presentation blocks and a post-conference reception provided an opportunity to network and forge research relationships among the schools, Whitten said.

“There’s time for people from these different universities to get to know each other and build linkages that can lead to future collaboration and networking,” he said.

“[The students] get a lot out of it—they have the opportunity to present their own research outside of their university and get feedback from others about their research approach.”

Presenters from Fordham included Whitten; GSE students Jun Li and Lindsay Blau Portnoy; Sandra E. Whitten, consultant to CLUE; and Mitchell Rabinowitz, Ph.D., chair of GSE’s psychological and educational services division and associate director of CLUE.

“There are lots of conferences, but what’s unique about this is that there are about 70 to 90 people in the room, and they’re all local, and it doesn’t cost anything other than a subway ticket,” Whitten said. “It’s a great opportunity to get together and share.”

— Joanna Klimaski

A Blast from the Past: Fordham Celebrates Black History Month

Civil rights pioneers, entertainers, preachers, politicians, educators—Over the years, Fordham has played host to some of the most dynamic black leaders in our time. In honor of Black History Month, we revisit the archives to showcase a few who have brought their inspiration to the University.

Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, the first African-American woman elected to Congress and the first major-party black candidate for President, spoke at the National Black Affair conference at the Lincoln Center campus on Feb. 28, 1970. 

The Most Reverend Archbishop Desmond Mpilo Tutu, (pictured with Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham) who rose to worldwide fame during the 1980s as an opponent of apartheid in his native South Africa, was given an Doctor of Humane letters, honoris causa, at the University Church on Feb. 23, 2005.

Leopold Senghor, the first president of Senegal and one of Africa’s seminal statesmen, as well as a respected poet, professor and intellectual, visited the Rose Hill campus in November 1961. His name is engraved on the Terrace of Presidents there.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson debated presidential hopefuls Al Gore and Paul Simon at a Democratic presidential candidate debate about urban issues at the Rose Hill campus on March 28, 1988.

See more photos in issue #8 of Inside Fordham when it hits the bins on Feb. 25.

—Patrick Verel

Spotlight on Historian’s Second Amendment Expertise

Saul Cornell, Ph.D., the Paul and Diane
Guenther Chair in American History.
Photo by Gina Vergel


Saul Cornell, Ph.D., the Paul and Diane Guenther Chair in American History, has been enriching the current national debate on gun regulation with a historian’s perspective. 



In the wake of the Newtown tragedy, Cornell’s op-eds and commentary have appeared in a variety of news outlets. This month Cornell will be part of a PBS weeklong exploration of guns in America, from their Colonial roots to their present-day politics. Flagship programs, from Frontline, to Nova, to Washington Week, will all feature the subject.



An expert on the history of the Second Amendment and author of A Well Regulated Militia: The Founding Fathers and the Origins of Gun Control (Oxford University Press, 2006), Cornell has gone on record with his concerns of when the Second Amendment overshadows the First Amendment. “Judging by the effort to deport Piers Morgan, the CNN host who promoted gun control, there is at least a constituency among Second Amendment supporters who don’t seem to have read the First Amendment—they seem to have just skipped to the Second Amendment,” he said recently. 



Cornell will be exercising his right to free speech on Feb. 19 at 9 p.m. on PBS nationwide, Channel 13 in New York as part of "After Newtown: Guns in America." You can see the trailer here.

Recyclemania 2013 Officially Underway

The competition among Fordham's residence halls to see who can recycle the most and waste the least kicked off on Feb. 2, and after the first week, leaders have emerged. 

According to results released on Tuesday, Feb. 12 by consultant Wake Forest, Rose Hill’s Marytr's Court leads the pack in both the categories of most paper and cardboard and most glass, metal and plastic collected, at .98 pounds per person and .89 pounds per person, respectively. 

Rose Hill's Tierney Hall and Lincoln Center's McMahon Hall recycled the least amount of paper and cardboard, just .50 pounds per person. Rose Hill's Alumni South recycled the least amount of glass, metal and plastic at a paltry .32 pounds per person.

Reflecting the differences between the two campuses, the 2.89 pounds of trash per person counted at Lincoln Center's Walsh Hall was far less than any amount recorded at Rose Hill. The students there who kept the most trash out of the garbage stream are at Salice-Conley Hall, at 3.49 pounds per person. Curiously, Martyr’s Court was on the opposite end of the spectrum, as its residents generated a whopping 7.55 pounds of trash per person.

It would seem that in the first week of Recyclemania, the 446 residents of Martyr’s Court are the most prodigious, both in conservation and in waste. Keep it up guys! Also, stop it!

Recyclemania continues through April 1. For more information, visit recyclemania.com.

—Patrick Verel