University of Alabama professor wins Fulbright fellowship for romance research
Al.com – July 11
A University of Alabama professor has been awarded the Fulbright-University of Leeds Distinguished Chair, a fellowship of up to 12 months in England, to research romance in pop culture. Catherine Roach, a New College professor and faculty member in the department of gender and race studies, will conduct research for her book, ‘Happily Ever After: The Romance Narrative in Pop Culture.’ According to a UA press release, Roach will interview members of the U.K. Romantic Novelists’ Association to examine how the romance narrative is changing. “The ‘story of romance’ is the most powerful narrative at work in contemporary American culture and, more generally, the culture of the modern West,” Roach said. “It has pervasive influence in religion, the arts and pop culture. On the question of how to define and live the good life, the romance narrative offers an imperative: find your one true love — Your One and Only — and live happily ever after.”
Nine startups to compete for $100,000 in Alabama Launchpad business contest on Friday
Al.com – July 11
Hopeful executives with nine startup businesses, including five from metro Birmingham, will pitch their business plans to a panel of judges Friday in the year’s second Alabama Launchpad business contest. Winners will advance to the finals, to be held Sept. 26 at the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Conference in Birmingham. The winning teams will divide $100,000 in prize money and all of the teams that make the finals will get free analyses of their business plans … Competitors in Friday’s contest:… Bidsters, an online interactive database in which construction industry businesses can connect and communicate. The business is based in Tuscaloosa and affiliated with the University of Alabama…. e-Electricity, which is developing technology allowing mobile devices to recharge wirelessly, without the need to plug-in to a power outlet. Based in Tuscaloosa and affiliated with the University of Alabama…Surface Integrity LLC, has developed custom surfaces for a wide variety of industries and applications, including controlling the surface of degradable metal implants. Based in Hoover and affiliated with the University of Alabama.
UA professor: Lincoln figured out God’s purposes for Civil War; to punish slavery or Yankee sins?
Al.com – July 11
The Northern minister giving the opening prayer at a Methodist assembly made no doubt about his conviction that God was bent on smiting the evil Confederates. “We ask Thee to bring these men, the rebels, to destruction and wipe them from the face of the country,” the Yankee clergyman prayed. Meanwhile, back in Dixie, a Southern solider, also a Methodist, penned his feelings about the Almighty’s plans for defeating the heathen invaders in blue: “It is doing God’s service to kill the diabolical wretches on the battlefield.” That was typical of the religious nature of both sides of the Civil War, said Professor George Rable, an historian at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, who spoke to about 130 attending the Tennessee Valley Civil War Round Table’s lecture series on Thursday night. Both sides were convinced God was on their side because each felt their cause was more righteous, or at least, less sinful than their enemy, Rable said. Rable, author of the acclaimed 2011 book, “God’s Almost Chosen Peoples: A Religious History of the American Civil War,” said it’s reasonable that people of the 19th century would have viewed the great calamity of the Civil War as some sort of divine punishment for great sins.
As Zimmerman Trial Nears End, Race ‘Permeates The Case’
KOSU (Oklahoma) – July 11
The defense is expected to wrap up its case Wednesday afternoon at the murder trial of George Zimmerman, the Florida neighborhood watch volunteer accused in the February 2012 shooting death of teenager Trayvon Martin… Wednesday on Tell Me More, former federal prosecutor Pamela Pierson told host Michel Martin that during the trial so far, “race is the 500-pound gorilla in the room that nobody is talking about. [But] I think it permeates the case — it has from the very beginning. The furor about whether Zimmerman was going to be charged. … And despite the judge’s and the attorneys’ efforts to keep racial or racist language to a minimum or out of the courtroom, I think it definitely is permeating the case.” Pierson, now a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law, said she saw race entering the picture particularly in the reactions to the defense attorneys’ cross examination of Trayvon’s friend Rachel Jeantel. Defense attorneys, she noted, try “to destroy someone’s credibility. … That’s their job — to attack their credibility. But we wouldn’t be hearing ‘Oh this was unfair’ or ‘this is racially biased,’ [if the witness had been] a thin, white, well-spoken woman” instead of the African-American Jeantel.
Tuscaloosa Symphony Orchestra hires new executive director
Tuscaloosa News – July 11
After a national search, the Tuscaloosa Symphony Orchestra has found its new executive director, Jessica Davis, formerly with the Illinois Symphony Orchestra…Davis was in town to see the TSO play its pops concert on the Fourth of July at the Tuscaloosa Amphitheater and interviewed for the job the next day… The personal touch helped, said Skip Snead, director of the University of Alabama School of Music. Snead served on the search committee with TSO board members Gaye Burroughs and Weldon Cole, fellow School of Music faculty member Diane Boyd Shultz, and Sandy Wolfe, executive director of the Arts and Humanities Council of Tuscaloosa.
OUR VIEW: More money for schools
Gadsden Times – July 11
Put in $100,000 and get back $1.3 million? First question: “What’s the catch?” Second question (once the first is suitably answered): “Where do I sign?” The Etowah County Board of Education will put its name on that dotted line after voting Tuesday to use one-eighth of its annual $800,000 allocation for capital improvements and building issues to participate in this year’s Alabama Public School and College Authority Pool Bond Program. APSCA pool bonds were authorized by the Legislature in 1998, according to information provided online by the University of Alabama Superintendents Academy. The bonds are secured by some of the taxes that make up the Education Trust Fund, and local systems choose how much of their capital funds they want to leverage to service the debt.