Three NEC Professors Selected for National Conferences

Inez McDermott, Associate Professor of Art History, has been selected to participate in a week-long seminar at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia.

Maura MacNeil, recently promoted to Professor of Writing, and Martha Andrews Donovan, Professor of Writing, have been selected to attend a conference for women writers sponsored by A Room of Her Own Foundation.


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Inez McDermott to Attend Seminar at High Museum

Inez McDermott, Associate Professor of Art History, has been selected to participate in a week-long seminar at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. The seminar, “Living with Art in Renaissance and Baroque Europe (c. 1300-1700)” will explore themes in Renaissance through 19th century art with emphasis on the Italian Renaissance.

The program runs from June 19-24 and is led by Gary M. Radke, Dean’s Professor of Humanities at Syracuse University and Consulting Curator of Italian Art at the High Museum of Art. This summer’s seminar is part of a three-year program sponsored by the Council of Independent Colleges and funded by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. The 2010 program was held at the Birmingham Museum of Art in Birmingham, Alabama and the 2012 program will be held at the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College.

Inez is one of approximately 20 participants selected from CIC member institutions.

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Two NEC Writers Receive Honors

Maura MacNeil, recently promoted to Professor of Writing, and Martha Andrews Donovan, Professor of Writing, have been selected to attend a conference for women writers sponsored by A Room of Her Own Foundation. The week-long conference, titled “A Dream of Her Own,” will provide an opportunity for 80 participants from across the country (New Hampshire to Alaska) to gather at Georgia O’Keeffe’s Ghost Ranch in New Mexico in August, to engage, write, and transform.

The conference is designed to offer women at various stages of their writing careers, a place to talk about writing, to network, and to work on specific projects. Many of the participants have been previously published, at least one has received a Pulitzer Prize, and some are making the transition from other careers, but all have made a commitment to writing as a serious pursuit. Participation in the conference is determined through a competitive application process that includes a writing vita, a fifteen-page writing statement, and a biography.

A proposal submitted by Maura and Martha, to offer a “Mind Stretch” learning experience at the conference, was accepted by conference organizers. Participants will be asked to reflect and write on an article of clothing as it represents the layers and textures of their lives.

“It is exciting to be in this kind of company,” remarks Martha Donovan. “This is a real validation for us as writers.” Martha, who will be taking a sabbatical in fall 2011, is currently working on a non-fiction project titled, “Dangerous Archaeology: A Daughter’s Search for Her Mother (and others),” and Maura is working on a project titled “Sugar.”

Maura was recently honored by the Poetry Society of New Hampshire in their quarterly national contest in February 2011. Her poem, “How We Die in This Family,” received the second place award and her “Paper Starts” received fourth place honors. A third poem, “You Find Me in Bucharest to Ask About My Inability to Understand History,” received honorable mention.

Both Maura and Martha contributed works to the anthology on memory, “Shadows and Light,” that will be published in the fall of 2011. More than 800 poems were reviewed through a blind submission process with 65 selected for publication. Maura served as the poetry editor for the anthology.

According to Maura, “What we gain at conferences and through our work as writers, we apply to teaching at NEC,” she said. “This opens up a whole new world of writing to our students and ties directly to the mission of the College. It is fabulous what a school like NEC has to offer students who are interested in writing.”

For a list of conference participants, click here.