AUBG Faculty Newsletter vol 1 issue 3

Summer 2013

Volume 1, Issue 3

Editor: Filitsa Sofianou-Mullen (fmullen@aubg.bg)

Faculty News Sean Homer, Associate Professor of Writing and Literature, presented his paper, ‘Splitting the Real’ at the London Conference in Critical Thought in June 2013. His paper “The Roma Do Not Exist” is now being translated into Spanish and will be published in O Tchachipen shortly and his paper ‘Nationalism, Ideology and Balkan Cinema: Re‐reading Kusturica’s Underground’ (2007) has been added to the Macedonian Film Director Milcho Manchevski’s website. His chapter ‘Jacques Lacan: Freud’s French Interpreter’ has been accepted for publication in The Routledge Handbook of Psychoanalysis in the Social Sciences and Humanities. (eds.) Anthony Elliott and Jeff Prager. London: Routledge.

Diego Lucci, Associate Professor of History and Philosophy, held a Visiting Professorship at the Catholic University of

the Sacred Heart in Milan, the largest private university in Europe and the largest Catholic university in the world, in May 2013. In Milan, Prof. Lucci taught a graduate seminar on perceptions of English culture and society in eighteenth‐century Europe.

During the summer, Dr. Lucci also presented his research on the Enlightenment debate on Jewish emancipation (the subject of a book he published in 2012) at the Universities of Florence, Pisa and Amsterdam.

Filitsa Mullen, Assistant Professor of Writing and Literature, co‐presented with Gergana Georgieva (AUBG Information Literacy Librarian) at the 10th AMICAL conference in Rome (June 12‐16). Their presentation (“Shaping the Curriculum, Advancing Information Literacy across the Disciplines: How AUBG Faculty and Library

Staff Collaborate on a New Program”) concerned progress made towards reviving AUBG’s writing program. Later that month in Budapest she presented her paper “The Cultural Politics of Assessment: Grading Rubrics in South‐Eastern Europe” at the Seventh Conference of the European Association for the Teaching of Academic Writing Teaching Writing across Languages and Cultures 27 –29 June 2013 at Central European University. Finally, two of her poems from her forthcoming collection Prophetikon appeared in Issue 27 of Литературен Вестник in July. The poems “Royal Death March” and “Economy” [“(Кралски погребален марш)” and “Икономика”] were translated by colleague Lyubomir Terziev who has tranlsated the whole collection.

investor types: looking into the day using daily data”. Journal of Banking and Finance 37, 2733‐2749. The journal ranks fifth in the world.

Aleksandar Vasilev, a newly‐appointed Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics, won a GBP 300 Conference grant from the Royal Economic Society to present his paper, "Fiscal policy in a RBC model with labor‐intensive government services, and endogenously‐determined public sector hours and wages," at the Doctoral Workshop on Dynamic Macroeconomics in Konstanz, Germany on May 24‐25. The same paper was presented at the 9th BMRC‐QASS Conference on Macro and Financial Economics at Brunel University, London, on May 30. The study was based on Chapter2 of his PhD Thesis (University of Glasgow), which he had already successfully defended.

This summer Jeffrey Nilsen, Associate Professor of Economics, was consultant for Daehwan Kim (former AUBG colleague) at Konkuk University for a grant he received from his university. Jeff and Dawhwan have started a project on the use of trade credit by chaebol (Korean firms with strongly allied but independent associates, like Samsung and LG). In addition Jeff has a new publication: “Delayed production and raw materials inventory under uncertainty,” forthcoming in International Journal of Production Economics.

Markus Wien, Associate Professor in History, was involved in a number of academic activities beginning with the last weeks of the academic year 2012/13. The first one was a guest lecture on “Nation‐ Building Policies in Mid‐20th Century Bulgaria” in early April at the American Research Center in Sofia. A few days after Commencement, i.e. in late May, he participated in the “3rd International Congress of Bulgarian Studies” at the University of Sofia. There he gave a presentation on “Bulgarian State Youth Organizations Before and After 1944”. In addition, he was invited to give interviews

Numan Ülkü, Associate Professor of Economics, co‐authored and published the article “Identifying the interaction between stock market returns and trading flows of

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concerning the congress to the Bulgarian National Radio as well as to the TV broadcasting company “BG On Air”. During the month of June he worked as visiting researcher at the “Center for the Study of Contemporary History” in Potsdam, Germany. Within the framework of this stay he gave a presentation about nation building in Bulgaria (see above) at the Center as well as a presentation about Bulgarian youth organizations at the “Society for Southeast European Studies” in Berlin. After the end of his stay in Potsdam, in early July, he participated as an invited speaker in the conference “The Volkish Europe. Concepts and Strategies of Rule in Nazi Occupied Europe”, organized by the University of Klagenfurt, Austria. There he gave a paper on “Volkish Elements in the Concepts of the Central European Economic Conference”.

10‐day, 8‐hour‐a‐day event with before and after online phases (the latter finished on 11th October) she was taught new methods of teaching German (or anything else for that matter) without drily lecturing, of explaining without authoritatively instructing, of presenting without doing it ex cathedra. She learnt facts about the human memory and the concentration skills of youth based on newest research. She also mastered the use of digital media in a language class. Sabina is already putting her newly acquired knowledge and skills in her Bulgarian classes, and is happy to see the enthusiasm of her students, also because they realize now more than ever that learning a language implies acquiring many

Sabina A. Wien (Adjunct Instructor of Bulgarian) participated in a “Brush‐up your Teaching Skills” qualification course offered by the Goethe Institute in Munich, Germany (June 30 ‐ July 4). In an extremely intensive

other skills important for their personal and professional development.

Sabina is extremely grateful to the AUBG Teaching Development Fund and Dean Miree for funding a portion of the course fee. She will be happy to pass on the newly acquired knowledge to her AUBG colleagues.

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