Pitt Faculty Work Featured in Pittsburgh Love Stories

Pitt Professor of English Lee Gutkind as well as Pitt writing program lecturer Jan Beatty and instructor David Griffith will have their work featured in Pittsburgh Love Stories, a new book published by The New Yinzer, an online literary magazine featuring writers in Western Pennsylvania.

EPIDEMIOLOGY ADDITION A ribbon-cutting ceremony Feb. 2 marked the opening of the new addition of the Epidemiology Data Center in Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health (GSPH). From left, Bernard Goldstein, dean of GSPH; Arthur S. Levine, senior vice chancellor for the health sciences; Katherine M. Detre, Distinguished Professor of Epidemiology in GSPH; Roberta J. Ness, professor and chair of epidemiology in GSPH; and Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg get ready to cut the ribbon.

The New Yinzer will celebrate the release of Pittsburgh Love Stories with a party at 8 p.m. Valentine’s Day in the Quiet Storm coffeehouse, 5430 Penn Ave. The book includes Gutkind’s essay “Forever Fat,” excerpted from his recently published memoir, Forever Fat: Essays by the Godfather (University of Nebraska Press, 2003).

Pittsburgh Love Stories features 20 writers from the region’s thriving literary scene exploring their relationship to the city through poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Pittsburgh Love Stories was compiled by Pitt alumnae Jennifer Meccariello and Margaret Emery, who both earned Bachelor of Arts degrees in English writing in 2001, and whose work also appears in the book.

The publication of Pittsburgh Love Stories was supported by the Sprout Fund, a nonprofit organization that supports community projects. The book will be available for purchase at the release party. There will be a $5 admission charge, which will cover food, drink, and musical entertainment.

—Patricia Lomando White

Pitt Anthropologist Finds Love, Romance Still Important in E-Mail-Order Marriage

By the year 2000, more than 350 Internet agencies were involved in the business of e-mail-order marriages. The primary “consumers” of this type of service are Western men, and the “product offerings” are Asian, East European, and Latin American women. Nicole Constable, Pitt professor of anthropology and research professor in the University Center for International Studies, examines transnational relationships and marriage in her book Romance on a Global Stage (University of California Press, 2003), which debunks commonly held stereotypes about women and men seeking love through correspondence relationships.

“Although meeting marriage partners from abroad is not new, the Internet has fueled a global imagination and created a time-space compression that has greatly increased the scope and efficiency of introductions and communication between men and women from different parts of the world,” Constable writes in Romance on a Global Stage.

LINES CONVERGING Thomas Hales, Pitt professor of discrete geometry in the Department of Mathematics, demonstrates parallel lines converging into a vanishing point during his lecture Jan. 29 in 2P56 Posvar Hall. The lecture, “Automated Theorem Proving in Geometry,” marked his formal installation as the Andrew Mellon Professor of Mathematics in the Pitt School of Arts & Sciences. Hales is known for solving the mathematical problem called the Kepler Conjecture, which involves determining the best way to store solid round objects, like cannon balls, a problem that has been vexing mathe-maticians for centuries.

Beginning in 1998, Constable communicated via the Internet with several hundred men and women who were involved in correspondence relationships. Constable later met in person with many of these men and women and also obtained permission, as a researcher, to join four private Internet chat groups, which allowed her to follow the conversations occurring in chat and news groups. Her study primarily focused on the views and experiences of Chinese and Filipino women and American men, who were all contemplating correspondence, actively engaged in correspondence, or had recently been married as a result of correspondence.

The women Constable met did not conform to the popular image of mail-order brides as passive victims motivated solely by economic hardship. Likewise, the men she met did not fit the stereotype of an abuser looking for his next victim. According to Constable, such representations reduce mail-order marriages to a form of capitalist market, overlooking the extent of the women’s selectivity and choice as well as the value both male and female correspondents place on love, romance, and marriage.

“In writing this book, it is my hope, if not to have dispelled such images, at least to have presented equally compelling, though much less sensationalist, images of the women and men who meet and participate in transnational correspondence marriages,” Constable added.

—Leigh Ann Wojciechowski

Louis Brandeis Subject of UPJ Great Americans Day

American jurist Louis Brandeis (1856-1941) will be the focus of Pitt- Johnstown’s seventh annual Great Americans Day Citizenship Forum and Luncheon Feb. 11 in the UPJ Living Learning Center’s Heritage Hall. Melvin I. Urofsky, professor of history and public policy and director of the Doctoral Program in Public Policy and Administration at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, will deliver the free public presentation “The Four Lives of Louis Brandeis.”

Brandeis was a staunch supporter of civil rights and individual liberty whose judicial decisions laid the groundwork for the modern American doctrine of free speech.

Known as the “People’s Attorney,” Brandeis worked as a lawyer, reformer, Zionist, and U.S. Supreme Court Justice, often in opposition to business interests, and was responsible for such social and economic reforms as savings bank insurance. In 1916, he became the first Jew appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Urofsky earned the Ph.D. degree in history at Columbia University and the J.D. degree at the University of Virginia. He has lectured extensively in the United States, France, Australia, Israel, and Great Britain, among other countries.

The forum series is presented by the college’s Office of Outreach and Professional Services, Department of History, Alpha Theta Beta Chapter of Phi Alpha Theta History Honor Society, and Sodexho Campus Services. Funding is provided by the Howard M. and Adelle C. Picking Great Americans Day Citizenship Forum Fund. Additional financial support is provided by the UPJ History Club.

The lecture and luncheon are open to the general public. For more information, call 814-269-2099 or visit http://offices.upj.pitt.edu/upjreach.

—Kimberly M. Miller