October 23, 2000 Accolades Bettina Aptheker Professor of women's studies Bettina Aptheker received a Phenomenal Woman Award from California State University, Northridge, on October 7. Aptheker was one of five honorees and was recognized for teaching and scholarship, with special mention of her book, Tapestries of Life, which is used as a text in Northridge core courses. On the day before the ceremony, Aptheker met with students and faculty at a luncheon in her honor, during which Tapestries of Life and two of her other books--The Morning Breaks: The Trial of Angela Davis and Woman's Legacy: Essays on Race, Sex, and Class in American History--were discussed. The Phenomenal Women Awards began in l995; the title comes from a poem by Maya Angelou with the same title. Award recipients also received the Certificate of Congressional Recognition from a local congressman and a Certificate of Recognition from Robert M. Hertzberg, Speaker of the California State Assembly. Margaret Brose Margaret Brose, professor of Italian and comparative literature, has been named this year's winner of the joint competition for the Howard R. Marraro Prize and the Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Italian Literary Studies for her book, Leopardi Sublime (Bologna: Re Enzo Editrice, 1998). This award, sponsored by the Modern Language Association, will be presented at the forthcoming MLA convention in Washington, D.C., in December. Mark Franco Professor of theater arts (dance) Mark Franko has been invited to participate in a ten-day "movement is a woman" conference in Stockholm, Sweden, where he is facilitating a talk with leading dance figures Paul Sanasardo and Donya Feuer. Franko will also present the talk "Figuralities: Dance, Theory, and Derrida's Concept of Parergon." Franko also recently presented the paper "'Encorcele par l'espace': Habitation, Evenement, et Reciprocite dans 'Les Danses du Bauhaus,'" at the conference and another, titled "Oskar Schlemmer, l'homme et la figure d'art," at the Centre National de la Danse in Paris.