Susan Currier Visiting Professorship
The Susan Currier Visiting Professorship honors the late Susan Currier, Cal Poly’s College of Liberal Arts’ beloved Associate Dean and Professor of English. The professorship, made possible by donations (including a generous contribution from Susan’s husband Max Wills), sustains Susan’s commitment to education and to the CLA. A champion of students and a highly effective administrator, Susan will never be forgotten due to her competence, her compassion, and her delightful sense of humor. Susan made many lasting contributions to the CLA, including the CLA Career Forum and the CLA Living and Learning Program in Residential Life. Susan’s influence on college education extended beyond Cal Poly to Kabul, Afghanistan; she spearheaded a successful fund-raising campaign for a children’s center at Kabul University, making it possible for mothers to go to college.
2011 - SILVIA SALVATICI
The College of Liberal Arts and the Women and Gender Studies Department are very fortunate to bring Dr. Silvia Salvatici to Cal Poly as our next Susan Currier Visiting Professor. Dr. Salvatici will teach two courses for Cal Poly in Fall 2011. The first course, HIST 307: European Thought: 1800-2000, will focus on gender and human rights. The second course is WGS 470: Women Refugees of the 20th Century, crosslisted with Ethnic Studies (ES 470), History (HIST 470), and Political Science (POLS 470).
Dr. Salvatici is a women’s/gender historian in the Department of Media Studies at the University of Teramo, Italy. She focuses on European society, culture, politics and the media, with the intersection between women’s/gender issues and humanitarianism at the core of her teaching and research interests. Dr. Salvatici has published four books, several edited volumes, and 30 academic articles and book chapters during her career. Her early work investigated Italian society during the fascist period and analyzed the interplay between social dynamics and the politics of fascism from a gender perspective, examining the "model woman" promoted by fascist propaganda. Using Florence as a case study, her second book (with Anna Scattigno) analyzed female militancy and political culture, before the rise of the second wave feminism. Dr. Salvatici's current research analyzes the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) humanitarian programs.
2009 - GHADA TALHAMI
Dr. Ghada Talhami was born in Jordan to Palestinian parents. She earned a B.A. in Liberal Arts from Western College for Women, an M.A. in Foreign Policy from the University of Wisconsin, and a Ph.D. in African History at the University of Illinois. Her interest in women’s issues was an outgrowth of her long years of focusing on Middle East history and politics, and on Islam as a social phenomenon of great relevance to gender.
Dr. Talhami is also interested in development studies, Palestinian human rights, the question of Jerusalem and many other facets of Middle East politics. The author of six books, four of which are on Egypt and one dealing with the Islamic mobilization of Egyptian women, Ghada is currently writing a historical dictionary on Middle Eastern Women. She lectures widely on this topic.
A professor in the Department of Politics at Lake Forest College in Chicago, Dr. Talhami is the inaugural Susan Currier Visiting Professor for Teaching Excellence at Cal Poly in 2009.
