Honorees Biographies - Western NY
Dr. Raymond Angelo Belliotti
College at Fredonia
Dr. Raymond Angelo Belliotti, distinguished teaching professor and chairperson of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Fredonia, is the author of five books: Justifying Law, Good Sex, Seeking Identity, Stalking Nietzsche, and What is the Meaning of Human Life? Good Sex has been translated into Korean and published in Asia. What is the Meaning of Human Life? was a finalist for the Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy's Book of the Year Award. He is currently completing a sixth book, Happiness is Overrated.
Dr. Belliotti has also published 55 articles and 25 reviews in the areas of ethics, jurisprudence, sexual morality, medicine, politics, education, feminism, sports, Marxism, and legal ethics. These essays have appeared in scholarly journals based in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Italy, Mexico, South Africa, Sweden, and the United States. Dr. Belliotti has made numerous presentations at philosophical conferences, including the 18th World Congress of Philosophy in England, and has been honored as a featured lecturer on the Queen Elizabeth-2 ocean liner.
Dr. Belliotti holds a law degree from Harvard University in addition to his doctoral degree from the University of Miami and has been teaching at Fredonia since 1984. He has received the William T. Hagan Young Scholar/Artist Award, The Kasling Lecture Award, and the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Dr. Ann C. Colley
Buffalo State College
Buried among Robert Louis Stevenson's miscellaneous papers is a seemingly insignificant tailor's bill for such items as "1 pair of white serge trousers," "1 pair of Bedford Cord riding trousers," "and 3 pairs of pyjamas" His biographers have never bothered to mention it, but Dr. Ann Colley took this as cue for a paper titled "Stevenson's pyjamas" to discusses how his choice of apparel in the South Seas was as much linked to his existence on the islands as were the subjects and words of his writing.
Dr. Colley's reputation has reached national and international prominence based on such works as Nostalgia and Recollection in Victorian Culture, which draws associations between the creative processes of quintessential Victorian writers and artists - including Stevenson, Elizabeth Gaskell, and J. M. W. Turner.
Scholars from England, Poland, and the Ukraine testify to Dr. Colley's intellect and character and have commented extensively about how much they benefit by her presentations, talks and personal conversations. Letters from leading literary scholars explain how her work reaches a level of intensity, clarity, and originality quite rare in contemporary literary criticism. The professor of English came to Buffalo State in 1985 already having launched an impressive start to her publishing record, indicated by having her dissertation, Tennyson and Madness, published in 1983. She has published articles in Word and Image, the CEA Forum, The English Record, The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies, as well as the very prestigious Genre, The Kenyon Review and Victorian Poetry. For her work, Dr. Colley has won numerous awards, including Fulbright Fellowships and the President's Award for Excellence in Research and Creativity. The college has recommended her for SUNY Distinguished Professor.
Dr. Carl Dennis
University at Buffalo
The headlines say it all: "Carl Dennis wins 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry" and "Carl Dennis named winner of the 2000 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize."
The artist-in-residence has won acclaim for his "wise, original, and often deeply moving" poems that "ease the reader out of accustomed modes of seeing and perceiving," according to The New York Times Book Review. In announcing the prestigious Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize award in 2000, Joseph Parisi, the editor of Poetry, said "Dennis is a poet who has valuable things to say - about faith (or its absence) in the modern world, fear, loneliness, life's regrets - the great What ifs and roads not taken - in ways that are personal and universal at the same time."
Dr. Dennis attended Oberlin College, the University of Chicago and the University of Minnesota before receiving his doctoral degree from the University of California, Berkeley in 1966. His first book, A House of My Own was published in 1974 and Practical Gods, which was awarded the Pulitzer earlier this year, is Dr. Dennis' eighth collection of poetry.
He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Study Center in Belagio, Italy.
Dr. David C. Felder
University at Buffalo
Dr. David Felder was recently quoted as saying: "My music is very difficult and as I like to say, it is not coming to your town soon."
Long recognized as a leader in his generation of American composers, his works are featured at many of the leading international festivals for new music and continue to earn recognition through performances and commissioned programs by such organizations as the New York New Music Ensemble, BBC Orchestra, American Composers Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic, American Brass Quintet, and many others. His work has been broadly characterized by its highly energetic profile, through its frequent employment of technological extension and elaboration of musical material, and its lyrical qualities.
Dr. Felder has received numerous grants and commissions including six awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, two New York State Council Commissions, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, Guggenheim, Koussevitzky, two Fromm Foundation Fellowships, and two awards from the Rockefeller Foundation among others.
Currently professor of Composition at the University at Buffalo, Dr. Felder also holds the Birge-Cary Chair in Composition, and has been Artistic Director of the "June in Buffalo" festival from 1985 to the present. Before coming to the University at Buffalo, he taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music, the University of California, San Diego, and California State University, Long Beach. He earned a doctoral degree from the University of California, San Diego in 1983.
Dr. Earl G. Ingersoll
College at Brockport
Dr. Earl Ingersoll's interpretation of select D.H. Lawrence novels in his most recent book, D.H. Lawrence, Desire and Narrative, suggests previous Lawrence studies suffered from the failure of scholars to examine the author within a postmodernist or deconstructionist framework. His 10-year scholarly endeavor helped overcome this neglect and placed Lawrence within the canon of postmodernist authors.
Dr. Ingersoll focuses on late 19th and early 20th century American and British literature. He has approximately 150 publications including more than 40 scholarly articles, more than 60 reviews, and more than 30 interviews with significant contemporary authors, among other entries. He has also published five books based on interviews with contemporary authors including the Post-Confessional American poets of the 1980s, Margaret Atwood, May Sarton, Doris Lessing and Lawrence Durrell. In addition, he has published Representations of Science and Technology in British Literature Since 1880, and Engendered Trope in Joyce's "Dubliners."
Dr. Ingersoll received his doctoral degree in English from the University of Wisconsin - Madison in 1971. He has taught at SUNY Brockport since 1964. In 1991, he was promoted to full professor. He was promoted to Distinguished Teaching Professor in 1996 and elevated to Distinguished Professor in 2001.
Dr. Margaret Anne White Matlin
College at Geneseo
Dr. Margaret Matlin's students don't value her for her scholarly record of research and publication, nor the international recognition she has gained as a leader in the fields of cognitive psychology and the psychology of women. They don't flock to her classes because of the various honors this SUNY Geneseo distinguished teaching professor has received from the American Psychological Association and the American Psychology Foundation. Nor her most recent award, the 2001 Heritage Award, presented to her by the Society for the Psychology of Women for her contributions to the teaching of the psychology of women. It is not even the time, energy and attention she devotes to students' intellectual and personal development.
What distinguishes Dr. Matlin most, according to those she has taught, is her unswerving commitment to social justice at the global, local and personal levels. Through actions as well as words, they say, she strives to make the College, her community and the world a better place.
At Geneseo since 1971, Dr. Matlin has played a major role in the development of the Women's Studies Program, of which she was coordinator for 18 years. She remains closely involved in this program, and in several student organizations, including Women's Action Coalition and Democratic Socialists of America.
Students at SUNY Geneseo are not the only ones to benefit from Dr. Matlin's research, teaching and involvement in social activism. Various editions of the major five books authored by Dr. Matlin have been translated into three languages and adopted as textbooks in undergraduate courses across several continents. Dr. Matlin is also a popular speaker at other college campuses throughout the United States; her most frequently requested presentation is titled "Bimbos and Rambos: the Cognitive Basis of Gender Stereotypes."
She is a prolific writer and the author of six books of which four are among the most widely used psychology texts in the country: Psychology, in its third edition; Sensation and Perception, and The Psychology of Women in their fourth edition, and Cognition in its fifth edition. Her work in known internationally; her book, Sensation and Perception has been translated into Spanish, and Cognition has been reprinted for distribution in India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal Bhutan, Pakistan and Mauritius. She has contributed chapters in eight additional books, and has over 42 journal articles to her credit.
Dr. Matlin chairs the committee that designs the Graduate Records Examination Psychology Test for the Educational Testing Services. She earned her bachelor's degree from Stanford University, and her master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Michigan.
Ms. Julie L. Newell
College at Fredonia
The New York Times' Bernard Holland wrote in his review of Antonio Vivaldi's opera "Arsilda, Regina di Ponto'': "I especially liked the evening's Nicandro, Julie Newell, a soprano whose sustained musicality and sureness with florid figuration sounded as good as any singing of the evening." Similar praise for her operatic and concert performances throughout the United States can be found in other publications including the New York Post and in the international opera magazine Opera News.
Newell's Lincoln Center debut came as guest soloist with the Little Orchestra Society of New York at Alice Tully Hall in the New York premier of Gian-Carlo Menotti's Muero, Porque No Muero. Newell has portrayed numerous operatic heroines including Madam Butterfly, Mimi, Desdemona, Alice Ford, Gilda, Fiordiligi, Pamina, and Countess Almaviva, with the opera companies of Arizona, Orlando, Memphis, Indianapolis, Buffalo, Kansas City, Long Beach, Syracuse, and Delaware, to name but a few.
The associate professor of Voice at the School of Music has recorded the Beethoven Ninth Symphony under the baton of Fabio Mechetti with the Spokane Symphony as well as recording works for guitar and soprano on Freedom Flight with Fredonia colleague James Piorkowski on the Centaur label.
In addition to her studio and classroom teaching, Newell serves as opera coordinator and Voice Area co-chair. She is a 2002 recipient of the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities. She also has received the SUNY Alumni Achievement Award, the Hagan Young Scholar/Artist Award at SUNY Fredonia and the Fredonia Alumni Association Outstanding Achievement Award.
Newell is a recipient of performance support grants from the William Matheus Sullivan Foundation of New York and Opera America of Washington, D.C.
Newell received her bachelor's degree from the SUNY Fredonia School of Music in both performance and music education and a master's degree from Syracuse University where she was awarded to study as a Graduate Fellow.
Mr. Richard St. George
College at Brockport
For the last 30-plus years this Thespian has lived life on the TV, the big screen, on stage (his true love) or on the radio.
As an actor, St. George has performed in some 200 plays in academic, community and professional theatre. Notable achievements include performing in an Off-Broadway production of Oedipus Rex with James Earl Jones, performing the role of Jacob Marley several times at Geva (Jeev-A) Theatre in Rochester, performing the roles of Fagin, Barnum and Doolittle for the Summer Arts Festival at SUNY Brockport and touring his one man show - Bully - about Teddy Roosevelt from New York to Florida.
As an actor, he has directed a vast array of productions from musicals like Cabaret and A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum to classics like Tartuffe.
The playwright St. George has written several short plays, six of which received productions last year. He has also adapted several full length works to dramatic form. These include Shakespeare's History plays, the Book of Genesis, Lysistrata and John Brown's Body.
He has even produced eight seasons of music and theatre events for the Department of Theatre at SUNY Brockport.
Finally, as matchmaker, St. George was instrumental in securing a professional alliance between SUNY Brockport's Department of Theatre and Geva Theatre.
St. George is an associate professor and acting chair for the Department of Theater. He received his master's degree from Illinois State.
Dr. Barbara H. Tedlock
University at Buffalo
Dr. Barbara Tedlock has spent extensive time amongst the Zuni Indians of New Mexico; the Quiché Mayan Indians of Guatemala; the Iwo, Ife, Oshogbo and Ibadan peoples of Nigeria, and has traveled to Brazil, Mexico, Columbia and Belize. Her research into these varied peoples has brought her national acclaim as a distinguished specialist in psychological, symbolic and cognitive anthropology, the anthropology of art and aesthetics, and ethno medicine in the American Southwest and Mesoamerica.
A past editor of American Anthropologist, the professor and chair of Anthropology is a widely published author of many abstracts and journal articles, magazine and newspaper pieces. Her published volumes include: Time and the Highland Maya, Dreaming: Anthropological and Psychological Interpretations and The Beautiful and the Dangerous: Zuni Indian Encounters.
A cum laude graduate of the University of California at Berkeley with a degree in rhetoric, she earned a master's degree with distinction in anthropology and ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University and a doctoral degree in anthropology from the University at Albany. She has received funding from the American Anthropological Association, and she holds a certificate in painting from the Arts Student's League of New York. Before joining University at Buffalo in 1987, she taught at Tufts, Princeton, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of British Columbia.
Dr. Julia M. Walker
College at Geneseo
By investigating the public image of Elizabeth I following her death in 1603, Dr. Julia Walker became the first scholar to question the metaphorical significance of the removal of Elizabeth's body by King James Stuart, her successor. As a result of Dr. Walker's discovery that the remains were transferred from their original tomb in Westminster Abbey to a marginal location next to her discredited half-sister, Queen Mary I, the Warders of the Abbey rewrote the guide to the building to include mention of this fact.
An internationally known scholar, Dr. Walker is the author of two monographs, "Medusa's Mirrors: Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and the Metamorphosis of the Female Self," and "The Shadow of the Queen's Tomb: A History of the Elizabeth Icon 1603-2003," which is forthcoming in 2003. She has made numerous contributions to her field with over 21 published essays in literary magazines and more that 50 presentations at various national conferences and seminars.
The professor of English compares the way in which Elizabeth's image was manipulated to support various political, social and artistic goals to the way in which Diana, Princess of Wales, has been the subject of exaggerated media representations since her sudden death in 1997.
Dr. Walker, who joined the faculty at SUNY Geneseo in 1985, has received a British Academy Fellowship, a Folger Institute Fellowship, and several National Endowment of the Humanities Summer Seminar Fellowships. In addition to her extensive research and teaching responsibilities, Dr. Walker has served as the director of the Women's studies program for four years.
Dr. Walker received her bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Tennessee and a doctoral degree from Purdue University.
Dr. William F. Wieczorek
Buffalo State College
As an international expert, Dr. William Wieczorek has extended his research on drug and alcohol related social problems, including research on drinking-drivers, to China, which is undergoing tremendous economic and cultural changes. To examine behavioral health issues in China, Dr. Wieczorek helped create a partnership between two universities now known as the Dalian Medical University-Buffalo State College Institute of Behavioral Medicine.
Dr. Wieczorek serves as director of Buffalo State's Center for Health and Social Research, an interdisciplinary center that conducts research on critical health and social problems, especially alcohol and drug abuse. He has employed his leadership to help the Center receive more than $5 million in support from federal, state, and private and public agencies. Currently the institute is conducting comparative research in two significant research areas: alcohol related personal injuries and suicide among women.
Dr. Wieczorek's research writings are extensive and appear in significant research journals such as the Journal of Criminal Justice, Substance Use and Misuse, Archives of Suicide Research, Criminal Justice and Behavior, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, Substance, Social Science and Medicine, and Journal of Studies on Alcohol.
Dr. Wieczorek also is a professor of Geography and Planning, with a bachelor's and doctoral degree from the University at Buffalo where he is an adjunct professor.
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