Faculty and Staff Notes

Shelley Lee, associate professor of history and comparative American studies, wrote an op-ed "Why Voting for Immigration Reform Is Critical for Korean Americans" for Truthout.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Dance Alice Blumenfeld, in collaboration with sculptor Paloma Izquierdo, presented Pellizco as part of the National YoungArts Foundation's In Process artist in residency series.

Matthew Wright, professor of theater, directed the world premiere of Everything is Okay (and other helpful lies), co-written and co-composed by Cleveland-based artists Melissa T. Crum and Caitlin Lewins. The musical runs October 26 through November 10, 2018, at Cleveland Public Theatre.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Religion and Jewish Studies Sam Shonkoff was a 2018 Shneer Fellow at University of Colorado, Boulder, from October 22 through 25, 2018. During his fellowship, Shonkoff presented a faculty and staff colloquium "From the Frankfurt Lehrhaus to Havurat Shalom: Fellowship, Renewal, Counterculture" about his archival work with the Zalman M. Schachter-Shalomi Papers, which are held at the university.

Matthew Rarey, assistant professor of art history, is one of a select group of scholars invited to participate in "Black Modernisms," a two-part seminar series taking place in October 2018 and April 2019 at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The seminars are part of CASVA's new initiative to support research on African-American and African art.

Matthew Senior, Ruberta T. McCandless professor of French, contributed a chapter,“Classify and Display: Human and Animal Species in Linnaeus and Cuvier,” to Animals, Animality and Literature, Bruce Boehrer, Molly Hand, and Brian Massumi, eds., Cambridge University Press, 2018. The essay examines the intersection and overlap between systems of classification for plants and animals and those used to classify humans according to racialized anatomical differences. For this article Senior consulted rich holdings in natural history in the Special Collections department of Oberlin Libraries, including a famous illustration from the work of Linnaeus depicting intermediate species between Homo sapiens and members of the ape family.

Three faculty members presented "Transformative Imaginations: Decarceration and Liberatory Futures" at the October 2018 Imagining America National Conference in Chicago. The faculty were: Jody Kerchner, professor of music education, director in the division of pedagogy, advocacy, and community engagement, and community-based learning/research faculty fellow; Jennifer Fraser, associate professor of ethnomusicology and anthropology; Adrian Bautista, comparative american studies and senior associate dean for strategic initiatives.

Assistant Professor of Physics Jillian Scudder was quoted in the Gizmodo article "Trying to Understand the Size of This New Space Discovery Will Short-Circuit Your Brain."

Matthew Rarey, assistant professor of art history, delivered an invited lecture, "Glimpsing the Flight from Enslavement" at DePaul University in Chicago on October 18. The lecture was sponsored by the university's Department of the History of Art and Architecture, the Department of African and Black Diaspora Studies, and the Center for Black Diaspora.

Associate Professor of Neuroscience Patrick Simen gave a talk "Evidence for continuous, online adaptation of decision biases, geared toward reward maximization" for the Cognitive Forum series in Michigan State University's Psychology Department.