WVU Eberly College awards Riggle Fellowships to Assistant Professors

Morgantown, WV, April 11, 2007: West Virginia University’s Eberly College of Arts and Sciences announced the recipients of the 2007 Riggle Fellowship in the Humanities: Dr. Joseph Hodge from the Department of History, Dr. Beverly Hinton Lentz from the Department of Philosophy, and Dr. Ryan Claycomb and Dr. Michael Germana from the Department of English.

The Riggle Fellowship in the Humanities supports exceptional junior faculty members who are seeking tenure through innovative research, effective teaching and other creative endeavors.

Dr. Joseph Hodge, assistant professor in WVU’s Department of History, earned a B.A. in history from the University of Waterloo in 1990, an M.A. in sociology and international developmental studies from the University of Guelph in 1993, and a Ph.D. in history from Queen’s University at Kingston in 1999, all located in Ontario, Canada. His earlier research included connections between science, economics, culture and politics of colonial development in east Africa. Since Dr. Hodge joined the WVU faculty in 2005, he has presented papers at the German Historical Institute, the Agricultural History Society, and Massachusetts Institute for Technology. He also authored Triumph of the Expert: Agrarian Doctrines of Development and the Legacies of British Colonialism, which was published in February. He has collaborated with Brent McCusker in the Department of Geography for research on colonial and contemporary land use in South Africa. Dr. Hodge’s current research project, From Colonial Experts to Postcolonial Consultants, is being conducted in the United Kingdom.

Dr. Beverly Hinton Lentz, assistant professor in WVU’s Department of Philosophy, earned a B.A. in philosophy with a minor in classics in Greek from San Diego State University in 1983, an M.A. in philosophy at the University of California, San Diego in 1987, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Marquette University in 1997. Since she joined the WVU faculty in 1999 as a visiting professor, she has published seven articles in academic journals from Ancient Philosophy to Locke Studies. Her paper, “On Matter and Two Models of Change in Aristotle’s Physics” has been accepted for presentation at the 2007 Pacific Division Meeting of the American Philosophical Association in April. Dr. Hinton also presented “The Dilemma of Change and the Kata
Sumbebekos Locution in Aristotle” to the Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy in October 2006. She is currently developing two papers: “The Subject Criterion in Metaphysics Z3” and “On Spontaneity and Teleology.”

Dr. Ryan Claycomb, assistant professor in WVU’s Department of English, earned his B.A. in literature from American University in 1995, and an M.A. in 1998 and a Ph.D. in 2004 in English language and literature from the University of Maryland, College Park. Since he joined the WVU faculty in 2005, he has presented at five conferences in cities such as Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles, and has had four pieces published in such journals as Theatre Journal and Politics and Culture. Dr. Claycomb has three articles under contract to be published: “Towards a Parodic Spectator: Metatheatre and Staged Feminist Retellings” and “Staging Psychic Excess: Parodic Narrative and Transgressive Performance” in Post-Modern Stages and Beyond and the Journal of Narrative Theory, and “Curtain Up?: Disrupted, Disguised, and Delayed Beginnings in Theatre and Drama” in Narrative Beginnings forthcoming in 2008. He is currently co-editing a volume entitled, Writing Against the Curriculum: Anti-Disciplinarity in the Writing and Cultural Studies Classroom, and developing his manuscript, Playing at Lives: Life Writing and Contemporary Feminist Drama, into a book.

Dr. Michael Germana, assistant professor in WVU’s Department of English, earned a B.A. in 1999 and M.A. in 2000 from Virginia Tech in English, and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Iowa in 2006. Since he joined the WVU faculty in 2006, he has prepared and instructed three courses: “American Literature II,” “Popular American Literature” and “Introduction to American Studies.” He presented two papers over the last six months, one of which, “The Balances of Deceit; or, What Does Silver Mean to Me?: Constance Fenimore Woolson’s ‘Castle Nowhere’ and the Money Question During Reconstruction,” was presented at the Seventh Biennial Conference of the Constance Fenimore Woolson Society. Dr. Germana has a forthcoming publication, “Honoré Grandissime,” to appear in the Student’s Companion to American Literary Characters, and a manuscript under consideration entitled, “Middlebrow-ing the Holocaust: Bernhard Schlink’s The Reader and Oprah’s Book Club.” For the final chapter of his book manuscript, he is currently researching the role that U.S. monetary policy played in pre-Civil War minstrel performances.

For more information, please contact Dr. Fred King, Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies, at Fred.King@mail.wvu.edu or 304-293-4611.

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