Faculty Spotlight
January - February 2005: Dr. Lydia Pulsipher
Bio
Lydia Pulsipher received her Ph.D. from Southern Illinois University in 1977 and taught first at Hunter College in New York City and then at Dartmouth College. In 1981 she joined the faculty of the Department of Geography at the University of Tennessee, where she has been a full professor since 1993. From 1973 to 1997, Dr. Pulsipher's research focused on the cultural and political ecology of the Eastern Caribbean since European contact.
Volcano in Galway
In 1997 a volcano destroyed the Galways site and much of the island of Montserrat, necessitating a new research focus. Building on a life-long relationship with Central Europe, Dr. Pulsipher then turned her attention to cultural responses in the tiny new country of Slovenia (just 2 million people), which was emerging from Communist Yugoslavia and contemplating a new life as a market economy and as a new member of the European Union. Her first study focused on Slovene women entrepreneurs who began small businesses when they lost their jobs during the transition to capitalism. More recently she has focused on issues of national identity that have arisen in response to tiny Slovenia's new role in Europe. In line with this interest, her students are conducting research on the symbolic role of wooden folk architecture, the role of national identity in changing traditional agricultural patterns, and the recent nostalgic revival of medieval cooking practices. All three topics are related to rapidly changing gender and social roles in Slovenia. She is also preparing a research proposal to look at the identity issues and migration plans of young adults in the southern tier of post-Communist countries, from Slovenia, Albania and Romania in Europe to Georgia in the Caucasus.
Ruin in Galway