Faculty and Staff Notes

Christopher Mirto, Oberlin Conservatory's assistant professor of opera theater,  makes his Cleveland directorial debut in Will Eno's play Wakey, Wakey at Cleveland Heights' Dobama Theatre. It opens Friday, October 18 and runs Thursdays through Sundays through November 10. Mirto describes the 80-minute production as "a smart show about life and death, silliness and simplicity, and it ends with quite a celebration of what it means to be human." In 2014, Dobama was designated as a Small Professional Theatre (SPT) level Equity House, only the third such theater in the region. Find information about tickets on their website.

Oberlin Conservatory violin professor David Bowlin '00 has just released Bird as Prophet, on New Focus Recordings.  He collaborates with colleague and pianist Tony Cho, an opera and vocal coach in the conservatory, on the CD's title track by Martin Bresnick. The recording also features two works written by Oberlin alumni. Under a Tree, an Udātta by Du Yun '01 is a piece for fixed media and violin anchored on a recording of Vedic chanting. Bleu (2011), a composition for solo violin, is a mature work written by the late George Walker '41 for his violinist son Gregory when the composer was nearly 90. Avant Music News praises the release, "Over these centuries the nature of virtuosity has evolved, along with the techniques needed to achieve it. What a 21st century violin virtuoso sounds like is on display on David Bowlin’s Bird as Prophet."

Professor of Physics Yumi Ijiri was profiled in the fall 2019 issue of the Association for Women in Science magazine.

Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Chanda Feldman publishes a new poem, "Money Tree," in the October issue of Poetry Magazine.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Thomas Hopkins' chapbook collection of short fiction, What I Remember of My Love Affair with the Bird and Other Stories, will be published in September 2020 by The Cupboard Pamphlet, a small press based in Denver and Cleveland.

Visiting Instructor of Dance Robert Wesner was awarded support by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation through its 2019 Knight Art Challenge in Akron, Ohio. Wesner will create an interactive project to serve the community of dancers via "Akron Ascending, an Identity in Dance."

Danforth-Lewis Professor of Economics John Duca and Aaron Kreiner '19 presented Aaron's honors paper, "Can Machine Learning on Economic Data Better Forecast the Unemployment Rate?" at the annual Academy of Behavioral Finance & Economics (ABFE) conference on September 20, 2019 in New York City. Duca also chaired a session at the conference. Following the conference, he spoke to the New York City Oberlin Alumni Club.

Associate Professor of Theater and Africana Studies Justin Emeka directed a production of Paradise Blue by Dominique Morisseau at Karamu House in Cleveland, which runs September 27-October 20.

Professor of History Leonard Smith is writing a book for Cambridge University Press on the history of French colonialism from the Old Regime to the present. In support of the project, he received funding from Oberlin's Luce Initiative on Asian Studies and the Environment (LIASE) implementation grant for travel to Vietnam during winter term 2020, to study the environmental footprint left by the French.

Alice Blumenfeld, visiting assistant professor of dance, wrote "The Seeds Behind 'Making It" for Stance on Dance.