Twenty-nine published works from San Jose State University faculty members were honored on Friday evening.
Their books and creative projects were being displayed on the eighth floor of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library.
The 26 faculty members who produced the works and showcased their productions were honored by SJSU’s Annual Author and Artist Awards.
“We have such a diverse and impressive amount of research, scholarship and creativity happening at our university, this is a way to celebrate that,” Dean of University Library Tracy Elliott said. “We work so hard all the time doing this work and we hardly take the time to celebrate and congratulate each other.”
Deans and associate deans from Davidson College of Engineering, College of Health and Human Sciences, College of Humanities and the Arts and College of Social Sciences acknowledged the honorees with awards.
Joan C. Ficke, the interim provost and senior vice president of academic affairs, said it was important to honor faculty members as well as let the students and surrounding community understand the importance of faculty’s works.
Linguistics lecturer Scott Alkire was being honored for the book “Harmony of Babel: Profiles of Famous Polyglots of Europe.”
He edited and translated the book which was previously only available in Hungarian language.
“Sometimes when we do academic work, it seems that it just disappears into the ether. However, the library is making a point of ensuring the campus community knows what we are working on,” Alkire said.
Alkire spent his evenings, weekends and semester breaks for a year and a half producing the literary work.
He contacted the family who had done the original interviews and received permission to edit the book.
Throughout the process, he also worked with a Hungarian translator for interpretations.
In the past five years, history professor Ruma Chopra traveled to Jamaica, Canada and other countries numerous times and this year she published her book “Almost Home.”
“Almost Home” featured a group of slaves in Jamaica who formed their own community and lived in the country for nearly century before being deported to Canada during a war.
They spent four years in Canada and then went to West Africa.
Forty years later, the group finally went back to Jamaica.
“I followed their stories in Jamaica, Canada and West Africa. I went to all these places to do research. This happened two hundred years ago, between the years of 1796 and 1850,” Chopra said. “I tell the story about how they survived and what they had to do to live.”
In 2005, communication studies associate professor Matthew Spangler read “The Kite Runner,” the book written by Khaled Hosseini.
The book centered around the stories of an Afghanistan refugee who came to the San Francisco Bay Area.
Based on his research on refugees, asylum seekers and undocumented people, Spangler decided to write a play script based on “The Kite Runner.”
He contacted Hosseini and started to work on the play’s production.
“There have been 15 productions of the play that have been staged in 44 different theaters worldwide,” Spangler said, “There are theaters throughout the United States, Canada, England, Ireland and Israel.”
Despite 400,000 people who watched the play worldwide, he was proud that the first production of this play was at SJSU, performed by student actors at the University Theatre in 2017.
“Some of the students left the university and participated in a variety of ways in professional productions,” Spangler said.
Honorees were also celebrated by family and friends, along with students and faculty.
