Faculty and Staff Notes

Associate Professor of Art History Matthew Rarey presented his paper "Fugitive Landscapes and the Challenge of Black Atlantic Cartographies: Brazil, 1763" at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC. Rarey's paper was one of eleven invited presentations at Dumbarton Oaks' Spring Garden and Landscape Studies Symposium, entitled "Environmental Histories of the Black Atlantic World: Landscape Histories of the African Diaspora," organized by N. D. B. Connolly and Oscar de la Torre. The symposium brought together archaeologists, historians, art historians, and landscape architects to discuss and debate place-based histories of landscapes, waterscapes, and environments of the Black Atlantic world from the fifteenth through the twentieth century.

Professor of East Asian Studies Sheila Miyoshi Jager published her latest book, The Other Great Game: The Opening of Korea and the Birth of Modern East Asia, "A dramatic new telling of the dawn of modern East Asia, placing Korea at the center of a transformed world order wrought by imperial greed and devastating wars."

Sidnhy Cheng, Tiffany Yuen, and Visiting Assistant Professor Daniel Zipp presented their research supported by Oberlin College’s student research assistantship grant at the annual meetings of the Urban Affairs Association in Nashville, TN. Their presentation focusing on Cleveland’s Asiatown neighborhood was entitled “From Chinatown to Asiatown: The Evolution of Asian American Neighborhoods.”

Associate Professor of Music Theory Joseph Lubben presented a paper, "Las síncopas hipermétricas," and a poster, "La enseñanza de la síncopa en el conservatorio del siglo XXI" at the inaugural meeting of SATMUS (la sociedad de análisis y teoría musical) in Madrid on April 21 and 22. Both papers were delivered in Spanish.
 

Assistant Professor of Theater Kari Barclay's newest article on asexuality in theater was recently published in March 2023's Theatre Topics. The article builds on their play, Can I Hold You?, which Kari wrote in 2018 and was one of the first plays to explore asexual identity.

Professor of Classics Kirk Ormand recently published an article, “Intertheatricality and Narrative Structure in the Electra Plays,” in A Companion to Aeschylus, eds. J.A. Bromberg and P. Burian. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell (2023), 145-157.  Ormand analyzes the use that Sophocles and Euripides make of Aeschylus' Oreseteia, often casting events from it as fictional or contrafactual narratives spoken by the characters in their own plays on the Electra myth.

Associate Professor Cynthia Taylor was a panelist for Meeting of the Minds: Inclusive Pedagogy, a panel on Peer Instruction organized by The National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT).

CIO Marcel Mutsindashyaka was recognized by CDO Magazine as one of its "Under 40 Security Leaders 2023." This recognizes the world’s most influential and successful cybersecurity leaders under the age of 40 and honors their efforts to protect data — an organization's most valuable asset — and positions them as role models for others pursuing similar careers or considering joining the field.

Professor Emeritus of Religion Margaret Kamitsuka was a panelist at the "Religion and Reproductive Politics" event at the Martin Marty Center, University of Chicago Divinity School, April 20-21. This two-day collaborative conference brought together scholars, creatives, journalists, organizers, policy-makers, and religious leaders to discuss the relationship of religion to the politics of human reproduction.

Associate Professor of Art History Matthew Rarey's first book, Insignificant Things: Amulets and the Art of Survival in the Early Black Atlantic, has been published by Duke University Press. The book traces the history of African-associated amulets carried as tools of survival in the Black Atlantic world between the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Rarey argues that these visually benign objects demand new ways of writing the histories of art and Atlantic slavery.