Arts & Culture

Students, Alumni Present Papers, Attend Roundtables at Society for Ethnomusicology Annual Meeting

by Olivia Drake • November 22, 2017

Several students and recent alumni attended and presented at the 62nd Annual Meeting for the Society for Ethnomusicology, Oct. 26-29, 2017, in Denver, Colo.

Founded in 1955, the Society for Ethnomusicology is a global, interdisciplinary network of individuals and institutions engaged in the study of music across all cultural contexts and historical periods.

Ellen Lueck, MA ’12, PhD ’17, presented her paper, “Proposing a Theory for a New Space, the Affinity Interzone.”

PhD candidate Gene Lai presented his paper, “Uniquely Singapore: Revitalizing a Tamil Folk Music Tradition in the Lion City.”

PhD candidate Sean Sonderegger MA ’14 presented “None of That is a Trend: Three Studies in Intertexuality and the Merging of Jazz and Hip-Hop Traditions.”

PhD candidate Huan Li presented her paper, “Roses and Thorns: Mass Media, Chinese Cultural Market, and Qinshi’s Creativity in Reform China.”

PhD candidate Andrew Colwell MA ’11 participated in a roundtable titled “Music and Mobility in Inner Asia: Experience and Theory.” Cowell, who is expected to earn his PhD in ethnomusicology at Wesleyan in 2018, also won the student prize for best paper from the Society for Asian Music.

PhD candidates Ender Terwilliger and Christine May Yong organized a panel discussion on “Performing within Parameters: Government Policy and the Performing Arts in Taiwan, Malaysia and Venezuela.”

In addition, Visiting Assistant Professor Kate Galloway chaired a panel at the event.

Gene Lai presented his paper, “Uniquely Singapore: Revitalizing a Tamil Folk Music Tradition in the Lion City.”

Ender Terwilliger, Elaine Sandoval (CUNY Graduate Center), Christine May Yong, and Margaret Sarkissian (Smith College) organized a panel titled “Performing within Parameters: Government Policy and the Performing Arts in Taiwan, Malaysia, and Venezuela.”

Wesleyan to Offer Residency for Artists Impacted by 2017 Hurricanes

by Olivia Drake • October 30, 2017

(by Andy Chatfield)

The Center for the Arts, in collaboration with the College of the Environment, invites an artist or artists from areas affected by the hurricane season of 2017 to campus for a short-term residency in April 2018. Artists working in all disciplines from Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands may propose a project that explores the evolving human relationship to water, and responds to the following questions:

How can the arts address and respond to the environmental and humanitarian crises wrought by climate change?
How do we redefine humankind’s evolving relationship to nature, specifically to water?
What role might the arts play in rebuilding after storms?

“Wesleyan’s Center for the Arts has a history of interdisciplinary programs, integrating the arts across campus,” said Wesleyan President Michael Roth. “This new one-time residency in collaboration with the College of the Environment will have an impact not only on the artist selected for the residency but also allow the Wesleyan community to respond to the environmental and social impact of these natural disasters.”

“The arts allow us to explore issues in ways no other medium does,” said Sarah Curran, director of the Center for the Arts. “The arts have a unique responsibility to help us improve our communities and world where ever we can. In these times of rebuilding after crisis, the arts can play a critical role in community building, envisioning, and imagining how we rebuild, and what we want to become.”

Project Details:
The Center for the Arts seeks to engage an artist in a 7 to 14 day residency in April 2018 on Wesleyan’s campus. Artists may work in any performing arts or visual arts discipline (music, dance, theater, visual arts), or in a practice that crosses disciplines. Artists are invited to create a work that responds to hurricanes and their environmental and social impact. We invite projects that also address environmental issues such as climate change, disaster, and disruption. The proposed project must include an opportunity for the Wesleyan community to interact with the creation of and/or presentation of the work. The project budget includes a $10,000 artist fee and up to $5,000 for travel and materials.

Eligibility:
• Artist must have permanent residency in one of the states or U.S. territories most directly impacted by the hurricane season of 2017 (Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands). If a group of artists, the majority of the group must have residency as described above.
• Artist(s) must be available to travel to Middletown, Connecticut for a 7 to 14 day residency in April 2018 and be able to work within the budget outlined above.
• Artist(s) must be able to provide proof of eligibility to work in the United States.

Required Materials:
• Application form, including project description, resume, three references, and work samples submitted here.

Timeline:
Proposals are due at 11:59 p.m., Friday, Nov. 17, 2017. Decisions will be announced no later than Dec. 15, 2017.
Residency is in April 2018 (dates to be determined in consultation with selected artist).

For additional information, contact Michelle Grove, interim associate director for programs.

“After seeing the scope of this year’s hurricane season, we thought this was a way that we could both address the needs of artists in those areas, while also deepen the conversation on campus about climate change on the human environment,” said Barry Chernoff, director of the College of the Environment, Robert Schumann Professor of Environmental Studies. Chernoff also is chair of the Environmental Studies Program, professor of biology, professor of earth and environmental sciences.

Williams ’89 Reads, Sings, Signs at Bookstore Event

by Laurie Kenney • October 12, 2017

Singer-songwriter Dar Williams ’89 performed—and also read from her new book—at the Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore on Oct. 10.

Dar Williams ’89 read, sang and signed copies of her new book, What I Found in a Thousand Towns: A Traveling Musician’s Guide to Rebuilding America’s Communities—One Coffee Shop, Dog Run & Open-Mike Night at a Time (Basic Book, 2017), for an appreciative audience made up of members of both the Wesleyan and Middletown communities during an appearance at the Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore on Oct. 10. The book is a journey through America’s small towns, where the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter has toured over the past 20 years,

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Assistant Professor of Music Sorey MA ’11 Wins MacArthur “Genius” Award

by Lauren Rubenstein • October 11, 2017

Tyshawn Sorey (Photo Credit: John Rogers)

Tyshawn Sorey MA ’11, who joined Wesleyan’s faculty this fall as assistant professor of music, has been awarded a fellowship—better known as a “genius” grant—from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The announcement was made Oct. 11.

The fellowship is a “$625,000, no-strings-attached award to extraordinarily talented and creative and creative individuals as an investment in their potential,” according to the MacArthur website. Fellows are selected based on “exceptional creativity,” “promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishments” and “potential for the Fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.”

by Olivia Drake • October 10, 2017

Douglas Kiman

Douglas Kiman, a first-year PhD student in ethnomusicology, recently received a scholarship to attend the 2017 Yiddish New York festival held Dec. 23-28. Kiman’s research focuses on contemporary klezmer music in Western Europe.

Yiddish New York celebrates and engages with East European Jewish (and other Jewish and co-territorial) traditions to foster new creativity. Drawing inspiration from the historic cultural riches of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, Yiddish New York is an intergenerational gathering featuring daily workshops and a broad spectrum of performances and programming. Yiddish New York evenings feature concerts, dance parties, and jam sessions at clubs.

Kiman, a native of France, spent two years in New York as a visiting scholar conducting research at the Yiddish Cultural Institute (YIVO). He also was a member of the Columbia Klezmer Band under the conducting of Jeffrey Warshauer.

“This scholarship is a unique opportunity to collaborate and study with some of the greatest living exponents of Yiddish folk arts including instrumental klezmer music, Yiddish song, dance and theater,” said Cheryl-Ann Hagner, director of Graduate Student Services. “Douglas will also start fieldwork for his dissertation by meeting and interviewing the most prominent American and international members of today’s klezmer scene.”

Garcia ’88 Joins NPR with Weekly Podcast: What’s Good with Stretch and Bobbito

by Cynthia Rockwell • October 6, 2017

Bobbito Garcia ’88 (AKA Bob Kool Love) and DJ Stretch Armstrong, a legendary duo from late-night hip-hop radio in the ’90s, have reunited—reigniting their wit and wisdom in interviews with current cultural icons for the NPR podcast, What’s Good With Stretch and Bobbito.

Bobbito Garcia ’88 and DJ Stretch Armstrong are back broadcasting—just like they were in the ’90s. Except:

It’s not student radio WKCR at Columbia University; it’s National Public Radio.

It’s not in the 1 until 5 a.m. timeslot; it’s an audio-on-demand podcast.

And the guests are not the as-yet-undiscovered hip-hop artists.

In What’s Good with Stretch and Bobbito, the listener will find Garcia and Armstrong offering smart, lively conversation with trendsetters and cultural icons ranging from Chance The Rapper, to activists Linda Sarsour, to Stevie Wonder. (“The standout interview of my career,” says Garcia, “with the legend of legends.”)

by Olivia Drake • September 27, 2017

As part of Green Street Teaching and Learning Center’s (GSTLC) AfterSchool Program, Nadya Potemkina, adjunct assistant professor of music (pictured at right), led a special music program for students in grades 1 through 5 on Sept. 25. Potemkina directs the Wesleyan University Orchestra and teaches Wesleyan Concert Choir. She’s also adjunct assistant professor of Russian, East European and Eurasian studies.

by Olivia Drake • September 25, 2017

Paintings by Jiaqi Maria Ma ’17 are on exhibit at the Freeman Center for East Asian Studies Gallery. Ma, pictured at right, created the paintings for her Wesleyan thesis titled (BEIJING | 北京).

On Sept. 20, Ma presented an artist’s talk inside the gallery. (BEIJING | 北京) consists of a series of five paintings based on her experiences living in Beijing. “I feel as though I made my memories real by building my own city through the process of painting,” she said. Ma, a Freeman Asian Scholar, double majored in classical studies and studio art and minored in archaeology.

by Laurie Kenney • September 20, 2017

For the second year in a row, a book of poetry published by Wesleyan University Press has been longlisted as one of ten nominees for the National Book Award for Poetry. This year’s nominee, In the Language of My Captor, by Shane McCrae, examines the idea of freedom told through stories of captivity. Comprised of historical persona poems with a prose memoir at its center, the book addresses the illusory freedom of both black and white Americans.

“We are delighted and honored that Shane McCrae’s book is on the long list for poetry—and to be in such esteemed company,” said Suzanna Tamminen, director and editor-in-chief of Wesleyan University Press. “It’s a tremendous achievement for our press, following on the heels of last year’s National Book Award finalist for poetry, Archeophonics, by Peter Gizzi.”

by Laurie Kenney • September 18, 2017

The Leavers, the debut novel by Lisa Ko ’98, has been selected as one of 10 works longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction.

“I was surprised and thrilled to receive the news, which I hadn’t expected as a debut novelist,” says Ko. “I’m thankful to the judges and everyone who has read and supported The Leavers. It’s especially great to see how many women writers are on the longlist this year—women of color in particular.”

Inspired by the true case of an undocumented mother who was deported without her son in 2009, the book tells the story of 11-year-old Deming Guo, whose mother, Polly, an undocumented Chinese immigrant, fails to return home one day from her job at a nail salon in Brooklyn—leaving the boy alone to navigate a new life as the adopted son of a well-meaning American couple in upstate New York.

by Olivia Drake • September 15, 2017

Photographs by Assistant Professor of Art Sasha Rudensky ’01 are on display in the Davison Art Center through Dec. 10. During a gallery talk, Rudensky explained how she rented an unsedated boa constrictor to make the photograph Snake Handlers, pictured in the center.

For more than a decade, Assistant Professor of Art Sasha Rudensky ’01 has repeatedly returned to Russia and the post-Soviet territories to photograph a lost generation that has come of age during the Vladimir Putin era.

On Sept. 13, Rudensky debuted a collection of these photographs at an exhibit titled “Acts and Illusions” at the Davison Art Center. The exhibition presents 24 photographs together with a video installation, revealing an unsettling view into contemporary life in the New East. Elijah Huge, associate professor of art, associate professor of environmental studies, collaborated with Rudensky on the video installation. Clare Rogan, curator of the Davison Art Center, coordinated the exhibition.

Studio arts major Rudensky was born in Russia and moved to the U.S. when she was 11 and returned as an artist in 2004. She’s also an assistant professor of Russian, East European and Eurasian studies and teaches Photography I and Digital Photography I this fall.

CTNow featured Rudensky’s exhibit in a recent article.

Photos of the “Acts and Illusions” reception and gallery talk are below: (Photos by Olivia Drake)

by Olivia Drake • September 12, 2017

Inspired by Fete de la Musique (also known as World Music Day), the sixth annual The MASH festival on Sept. 9 highlighted Wesleyan’s student music scene, with multiple stages on campus featuring everything from a cappella ensembles to student, faculty and alumni bands.

Stages were set up at Foss Hill, outside Olin Library and North College. More than 20 groups and soloists performed at Wesleyan’s The Mash including Bonanza, Good Morning CT, McCleary McCleary, MEG, Saint Something, Jal, The Basukes, Smokin’ Lilies, Jess Best ’14, Prometheus, New Group, Gabe & Brien, Savannah Jeffreys ’18, Johnny Gilmore ’18, Anna Savage ’18, Quasimodal, Sloane Peterson, ethereal whoosing, The Purple Windsounds, LAZ, Cicero Presley and Tasty Desert Creatures.

The MASH was held in conjunction with the City of Middletown’s Main Street Stroll, a family-friendly celebration of Middletown’s Main Street and the new Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore. The stroll featured music, street performers, specialty workshops and more.