Forum Network

Harry Greene's research concerns the behavior, ecology, evolution, and conservation biology of vertebrates. He focuses on how morphology and behavior interact in the origins of evolutionary novelties, and on the reasons for geographic variation in the structure of ecological communities; he seek to understand those topics within an historical evolutionary context, and work primarily with lizards and snakes. Within that evolutionary and ecological framework, he gathers information on morphology and natural history from museum specimens (e.g., stomach contents), and he uses radiotelemetry to assemble behavioral inventories for free-living animals . Greene's research strategy is to accumulate data on several species at a site, sometimes for several years. From 1982 to 1992 he worked in Costa Rica and is preparing results of those studies for publication. In 1993 he studied Amazonian snakes in Brazil with local collaborators, and in 1997 he spent a month in northern Vietnam.

An internationally-recognized authority on global, economic, political and social trends, Joel Kotkin is the author of the critically acclaimed book, *THE CITY: A GLOBAL HISTORY*, published by Random House/Modern Library. Kotkin is also the author of *THE NEW GEOGRAPHY*, *How the Digital Revolution is Reshaping the American Landscape* (Random House, 2000); and *TRIBES: How Race, Religion and Identity Determine Success In the New Global Economy*, (Random House, 1993). Currently, he is writing a book on the American future from Penguin Publishing, which will look at how the nation will evolve in the next four decades. Kotkin is Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange, California. Joel is also a Senior Fellow with the New America Foundation in Washington, DC; a Fellow with the Center for an Urban Future in New York City; and a Senior Consultant with the Praxis Strategy Group. A widely published journalist, Mr. Kotkin writes the weekly "New Geographer" column for Forbes.com. He previously wrote the monthly "Grass Roots Business" column in *The New York Times' Sunday Business* section for several years. He served as West Coast Editor for *Inc. Magazine* for five years and continues to contribute to the publication. He was a Business Trends Analyst for KTTV/Fox Television in Los Angeles, where, in 1994, he won the Golden Mike Award for Best Business Reporting on the changing dynamics of the entertainment industry.

As Director of the Center for Shark Research, a national research center developed in cooperation with the National Marine Fisheries Service and other institutions, Bob Hueter supervises research, educational projects, and international exchanges on issues dealing with sharks, skates, and rays. As manager of the center's Shark Biology Program, Hueter's current research focuses on the anatomy, physiology, behavior, ecology, and fisheries biology of sharks worldwide, especially in the Gulf of Mexico, Carribean Sea, and Gulf of California. Hueter also coordinates the National Shark Research Consortium, a coalition of four leading shark research programs in the US.

Mark Pokras is Associate Professor at the Department of Environmental and Population Health at Tufts University. He has worked in ornithology, marine biology and environmental conservation before graduating from Tufts School of Veterinary Medicine. Pokrak has been recognized for his work in education, wildlife rehabilitation, and wildlife health, and has been published extensively in these areas.

Jonathan Bird is a professional Emmy Award-winning underwater cinematographer with experience in all aspects of underwater wildlife cinematography and still photography. He has shot and produced films for television which have aired all over the world. A frequent contributor to several diving magazines, and author of several books, Jonathan is widely published on marine life subjects and a member of the Wyland Ocean Artists Society. As president of the non-profit environmental organization Oceanic Research Group, Inc., he produces educational films about marine life for use in schools and libraries, as well as satellite learning. He is a former professor in the broadcasting department at New England Institute of Art and Communications, in Boston, Massachusetts. He is currently in post-production on his new high definition documentary Secrets of the Reef.

Frank F. Sousa (BS, Santa Clara University; MA and PhD, UC Santa Barbara) is Professor of Portuguese and Director of the Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Author of *O Segredo de Eea*, an often-cited book on Portugal's foremost novelist, Eea de Queiros, he is presently working on a critical edition of Eea's *A cidade e as serras*. He has twice been a Fulbright Scholar at the National Library in Lisbon, Portugal. Co-founder and Director of the peer-reviewed, semi-annual journal, *Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies*, he is currently the publisher of this publication and general editor of *the Portuguese in the Americas Series*. He proposed and led the campaigns to create the Summer Program in Portuguese (1994), the Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture (1996), and the Department of Portuguese (2000) of which he was the first Chair (2001-2002). Prof. Sousa further organized the establishment of the Helio and Amalia Pedroso/Luso-American Foundation Endowed Chair in Portuguese Studies (2001), the Ferreira-Mendes Portuguese-American Archives Endowment (2005), and the Portuguese-American Newspaper Digitization Initiative (2007). The latter aims to make available online the major Portuguese newspapers published in America, beginning with *the Diario de Noticias *(1919-1973), whose nearly 130,000 pages will be available online in the Claire T. Carney University Library by March 2009. He is a member of the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities and was designated a Comendador da Ordem do Infante D. Henrique by the Government of Portugal in 1997.

Katherine Vaz, a Briggs-Copeland Lecturer in Fiction at Harvard University and a 2006-7 Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, is the author of *Saudade *(1994), which received critical acclaim as the first contemporary novel from a major New York publisher about Portuguese-Americans. Barnes & Noble included it in their Discover Great New Writers series. Saudade appeared in Portuguese in 1999 and immediately made the bestsellers list. Film rights were optioned by Marlee Matlin and Solo One Productions. As recipient of the 1997 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, Vaz had her story collection, *Fado & Other Stories*, published in October, 1997, by the University of Pittsburgh Press. The book, translated into Portuguese in 2002, was favorably reviewed by *The New York Times*, *The Washington Post*, *The Boston Globe*, *The Times Literary Supplement of London*, *The International Herald Tribune*, and many other publications. Her second collection, *Our Lady of the Artichokes and Other Portuguese-American Stories*, won the 2007 Prairie Schooner Book Prize and was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2008. Two stories were shortlisted in *Best American*, one received an Honorable Mention in the Zoetrope All-Story Fiction Contest, and another received Honorable Mention in the Pushcart Prizes. Vaz's non-fiction has appeared in *The New York Times*. She also writes occasional book reviews for *The Boston Globe*. Katherine Vaz received a Grant Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1993, as well as several research grants from the University of California. She received a Davis Humanities Institute Fellowship for Spring, 1999.

Frank X. Gaspar is the author of three previous collections of poetry, *The Holyoke*, *Mass for the Grace of a Happy Death*, and *A Field Guide to the Heavens* (winner of the Brittingham Prize for Poetry), and a novel, *Leaving Pico*, which won the Barnes and Noble Discover Award and the California Book Award for First Fiction. His work has been anthologized in *Best American Poetry* 1996 and 2000, among others. His many honors and awards include a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, a Pushcart Prize, the Edgar Stanley Award and a Readers' Choice Award. Born in Provincetown, MA, he now lives in southern California.

Adrian Tinniswood is a native of Derby in the UK. Born in 1954, he followed a degree in English and Philosophy at the University of Southampton with a Masters in Philosophy on 'Minor Poets of the 1890s' at Leicester.

Dr. Catherine M. Parisian has spent the past two years as Project Bibliographer and Scholar in Residence at the Library of Congress, where she researched, compiled a catalogue for, and wrote the history of the first White House Library. Catherine Parisian completed her PhD in 2005 at the University of Virginia, where her research focused on the eighteenth-century English novelist Frances Burney. She regularly reviews books for *The Eighteenth Century: A Current Bibliography* and has published articles in *the Bibliographical Society of Australia*, *New Zealand Bulletin*, and *Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America*. She also has an essay forthcoming in a collection from the twentieth annual De Bartolo Conference.