• Dr. Daria Cohen, assistant professor of Spanish and foreign language education, presented a paper titled "Twisted Sisterhood: Deconstructing Female Solidarity in Cristina Fernández Cubas' _Hermanas de sangre_" at the Northeast Modern Language Association Convention in Philadelphia on March 3. The presentation was part of a panel on Women Playwrights of Modern and Contemporary Spain. Dr. Cohen also attended the Foreign Language Educators of NJ Spring Convention in Somerset on March 18.
• Dr. Linda Materna, chairperson of foreign languages and literatures and professor of Spanish, presented a paper entitled "Elena Cánovas' Theater of Liberation: Libertas Libertatis” at the annual conference of the Northeast Modern Language Association in Philadelphia from March 2-5. In addition, she chaired a panel on women playwrights of modern and contemporary Spain. Finally, Dr.Materna was one of two scholars who introduced the conference's invited Spanish playwright Jose Ramón Fernández with a talk entitled "Poética y temática delteatro de José Ramón Fernández" as well as a dramatic reading of one of his brief plays. She also presented on March 29 a talk on the themes of freedom, authority and artistic expression in the play “Cartas de amor a Stalin” (Love Letters to Stalin) of Spanish playwright Juan Mayorga for the Grupo de Mujeres Latinoamericanas de Princeton."
• Dr. Pearlie Peters, professor of English, was a recent special guest speaker and moderator on selected short stories of Zora Neale Hurston presented in the discussion series, “Speaking of Voice: Stories With a Southern Accent,” which was held in March at the Monmouth County Library Headquarters Division in Manalapan.
• Dr. Mitchell Ratner, associate professor of finance, Dr. Christine Lentz, associate professor of management and organizational behavior, and Dr. Ilhan Meric, professor of finance, have a paper titled "A Principal Components Analysis of the Index Returns of Latin American Stock Markets and the World's Other Stock Markets" accepted for presentation at the 2006 conference of BALAS (the Business Association of Latin American Studies) in May. Dr. Ilhan Meric has a second paper with Dr. Joe Kim, associate professor of marketing, and Dr. Lewis W. Coopersmith, associate professor of decision sciences, titled "Co-movements of Pacific-Basin Stock Markets:Portfolio Diversification Implications" accepted for presentation at the 2006 conference of the Academy of International Business in June. Dr. Gulser Meric of Rowan University is a co-author of both papers.
• Dr. Jack Sullivan, director of theAmerican Studies program and professor of English, delivered a paper on March 17 at the Conference on Black Music Research at the Society for American Music Conference.; The title was "The New Unknown World of Freedom: the Impact of Jazz on European Artists and Intellectuals." The keynote speaker at the conference cited Sullivan's “New World Symphonies” as one of the two most significant recent books on black music.
• The fourth annual meeting of the Music Theory Society of the Mid Atlantic was held March 17-18 at Westminster Choir College of Rider University. Hosted by the Department of Composition, History, and Theory, the conference featured a number of scholarly papers and presentations on a wide variety of topics. Announced at the meeting was the inauguration of GAMUT, the first peer-reviewed online journal published by a regional music theory society.