Faculty and Staff Notes

Danielle Terrazas Williams, assistant professor of history, was awarded a Huntington long-term fellowship to conduct research at the library for the 2018-2019 academic year.

Tania Boster, associate director of the Bonner Center, gave a talk with Chryssa Zachou, head of the Department of Sociology at Deree College-the American College of Greece, about Community-Based Oral History Research and Global Course Connections. The talk held at Deree College in Athens, Greece was part of the Great Lakes Colleges Association's Oral History in the Liberal Arts initiative and the Global Liberal Arts Alliance Global Course Connections program.

Assistant Professor of Dance Alysia Ramos presented her new choreographic work Forgone Territory with Oberlin Dance Project in DanceWorks at the Cleveland Public Theater June 7-9, 2018. The work interwove text, movement and music in an examination of the shadow side of the sharing age, asking, “What is private when technology increasingly infiltrates personal lives?"  Oberlin Dance Project is a new project that brings together talented college students with local professionals and nationally established guest artists to collaborate on the creation of new works and establish professional networks. In this production, five Oberlin students joined Ramos and New York City-based guest artist Nathan Trice to create and perform the work for the professional stage. The company shared the DanceWorks evening with Cleveland-based company Marquez Dance Project

Chie Sakakibara, assistant professor of environmental studies & East Asian studies, received a $10,000 research grant from the Foundation for Research & Promotion of Ainu Culture for her project titled "Community-Partnered Exploration of Ainu Environmental Justice and Heritage Resources.” Sakakibara will initiate an interdisciplinary ethnographic project on environmental justice and heritage in the indigenous Ainu community in Biratori, Hokkaido, Japan. Biratori is a community that has been known for its environmental activism since the 1970s. Oberlin’s Allen Memorial Art Museum received a gift of photographs taken by the German-American photographer Arnold Genthe (1869-1942; gift of Christopher Thomas ’75). Twenty-five photos in the collection were taken in 1908 in Biratori, and they are identified as the second-oldest set of photos that documented the people and environment of the settlement. This grant will allow Sakakibara to recover detailed contextual information about the photographs; develop community-wide consensus on the proper and future access and uses of these materials; support and enable contemporary and innovative uses of these materials by Ainu artists, educators, environmentalists, and the community.

Steven Volk, emeritus professor of history, wrote an op-ed in the Cleveland Plain Dealer challenging the recent immigration raids in Northeast Ohio as contrary to both U.S. values and the national interest.

Associate Archivist Anne Salsich was invited to participate on the panel "Migration and Sanctuary Histories: Redrawing Lines in Troubled Times” at the April 2018 National Conference on Public History's annual meeting in Las Vegas. Her talk titled “Sanctuary Communities: Answering to a Higher Law" drew on the Archives' work on the Oberlin Sanctuary Project, a virtual exhibit on their website, and reported on Oberlin's participation in the Courage and Compassion traveling exhibit in the Baron Gallery in spring 2018. Salsich was joined by co-panelists from University of California Santa Barbara and University of California Riverside.

Assistant Professor of Economics Martin Saavedra both discussed and presented a paper at the annual American Society of Health Economists conference.

In her capacity as chair of the early music analysis interest group of the Society for Music Theory, Assistant Professor of Music Theory Megan Kaes Long organized a conference that took place at the beginning of June at Brandeis University. The conference celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the important volume Tonal Structures in Early Music, edited by Cristle Collins Judd, and it featured fifteen papers as well as a roundtable discussion among five authors from the Tonal Structures volume.

The Office of Communications was awarded two Circle of Excellence Awards from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). The Oberlin Conservatory Magazine (2017) received the silver design award in the periodicals category, and the Oberlin Alumni Magazine received the silver award for college and university general interest magazines with circulations of 30,000-74,999.

Professor of History Clayton Koppes was honored with the Distinguished Achievement Award from Bethel College. The award recognizes character and citizenship, achievement in a chosen profession or vocation, and work of benefit to humanity. More about Koppes and the award.