Arkansas Museums Association held at ASU Museum
The 44th annual conference of the Arkansas Museums Association (AMA) convened at the Arkansas State University Museum March 23-26. ASU Museum staff members enjoyed high-profile roles in the conference, serving as hosts for the conference and presenting more than a third of the total number of sessions. Addressing  the conference theme, “Back to Basics,” and focusing on best museum practices, ASU Museum director Dr. Marti Allen presented “Museum Law 101,” Museum Law 201,” and “Practical Exhibit Planning;” assistant director Lenore Shoults presented “Audio Interpretation;” and curator of collections Julie MacDonald presented “Handling and Care of Artifacts.” At the Thursday evening awards ceremony, the ASU Museum’s two newest exhibitions, "Portals of the Soul" and "Exploring the Frontier," were both recognized with Exhibit of the Year awards, and the museum’s Arkansas History Children’s Art Project was recognized with an Educational Program of the Year award. The AMA also paid homage to Arkansas Heritage SITES, awarding Arkansas Heritage SITES director Dr. Ruth Hawkins with the Peg Newton Smith Lifetime Achievement Award for her contributions to the Arkansas museum community. Hawkins  currently chairs the ASU Centennial celebration and is director of ASU's System Initiatives for Technical and Educational Support (SITES), with responsibilities for the Southern Tenant Farmers Museum at Tyronza, Lakeport Plantation in Lake Village, and the Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and Educational Center. The Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum was recognized with an Exhibit of the Year award for its newest exhibit, "The Piggott Connection: A Hemingway Timeline." The event signaled a resounding affirmation of ASU’s museum leadership in the region and throughout the state of Arkansas. This conference was co-organized locally by Diana Sanders, assistant director, Hemingway-Pfeiffer Museum and Educational Center and Lenore Shoults and was sponsored by the Jonesboro Advertising and Promotion Commission. For details, see the NewsPage release.

Dr. Gil-Osle publishes article in Bulletin of Comediantes
Dr. Juan Pablo Gil-Osle, Spanish, recently published the article “El examen de maridos en El conde Patinuplés de Ana Caro: la agencia femenina en el Juicio de Paris,” in the Bulletin of the Comediantes (61.2 (2009), 103-19), a first-tier journal specializing in Spanish and Latin American early modern theater. Dr. Gil-Osle asserts that most of the feminist criticism on El conde Partinuplés, by the female playwright Ana Caro (Spanish playwright of the Golden Age) focuses ultimately on the marriage of the female protagonist. Rosaura, Byzantium’s empress, is forced to choose a consort in order to give birth to an heir. Some critics vehemently express frustration for what they see as a patriarchal imposition; others focus their analysis on all the freedoms that the empress enjoys in choosing a husband to her taste, avoiding the theoretical analysis of the marriage. Some of these criticisms are anachronistic, since they are based in Enlightenment concepts of freedom, which become a category difficult to apply to the cultural productions of the seventeenth century. Dr. Gil-Osle proposes that this marriage should be analyzed from the point of view of the “proto-feminist” values of the seventeenth century's female writers. Accordingly, his proposed theoretical framework is a combination of the postcolonial feminism of Saba Mahmood and an iconographic analysis of the matrimonial myth of the Judgment of Paris in medieval and early modern culture.

Dr. Gauri Guha contributes to textbook on climate change
Dr. Gauri-Shankar Guha, Environmental Economics, has contributed a chapter to a recently published textbook on climate change. "Climate Change and Sustainable Development" was published in March by Linton Atlantic Books, Ltd. The book explores the impact and related policy implications of climate change on our planet. The need for sustainable development is discussed from many different perspectives. It is presented at the upper level of undergraduate higher education, with ideas on how to use this book in the classroom and questions to help students to review the material. The editor is Dr. Ruth Reck, professor of Land, Air and Water Resources at the University of California, Davis. Professor Guha’s chapter (chapter 31, Part 6), “Sustainable Climate Action in the United States: Issues, Adaptation, and Mitigation Initiatives,” deals with sustainability in the United States. The book’s forty chapters cover many different topics related to climate change and sustainability including biofuels, water resources, endangered plants, Hurricane Katrina, road usage, rainforests, clouds, agriculture, sea levels, mining, legal implications, fishing, education, habitat restoration, rivers, and many more. Many tables, figures, diagrams, maps and photographs are included to clarify points of scientific interest.

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