Faculty and Staff Notes

On March 20, Associate Professor of Art History Matthew Rarey delivered the 2023 Stern Lecture at the Newcomb Art Department at Tulane University in New Orleans. Rarey's talk, "Atlantic Slavery and the Ethics of Cartography: Brazil, 1763," is based on recent archival research in Brazil and Portugal, and forms part of his in-progress book manuscript about eighteenth-century colonial maps of maroon communities in South America and the afterlives of these maps in the work of contemporary Black artists and land rights activists in Brazil.

Professor of Geosciences Zeb Page recently published a paper in the Journal of Metamorphic Geology in collaboration with geochemists from England and Scotland entitled "A rutile and titanite record of subduction fluids: Integrated oxygen isotope and trace element analyses in Franciscan high-pressure rocks."

Tim Weiss’ newest recording on the BIS label, Missy Mazolli: Dark With Excessive Bright, includes several instrumental pieces by the formerly opera-focused Mazolli, with featured performances by violin soloist Peter Herresthal. Weiss leads Norway’s Arctic Philharmonic in four works on the recording. For six seasons, Weiss was artistic director of the Arctic Philharmonic Sinfonietta and he continues to be a regular guest. The album has garnered a number of rave reviews.

The Strad (free e-newsletter subscription needed) writes that “musicians from the Arctic Philharmonic provide rich, detailed support in Dark with Excessive Bright,” while the “ensemble truly comes into its own in three recent works – Sinfonia (from Orbiting Spheres), These Worlds in Us and Orpheus Undone – which receive vividly etched, expertly paced accounts.”

The Arts Fuse credits Weiss’ direction in These Worlds in Us: “Unfolding essentially like a set of variations, its pulsing, turbulent textures and captivating sense of musical space are strongly etched by Tim Weiss and the Arctic Philharmonic.”

Assistant Professor of Dance Al Evangelista is featured in The Inside Story podcast for his role as an advisory board member for the Institute for Empathic Narrative. The Institute is funded by an American Council of Learned Societies grant and is featured on the ACLS site. 

Curator of Academic Programs Hannah Wirta Kinney recently published a chapter entitled "The Fleshiness of Bronze" in the edited volume The Matter of Mimesis Studies of Mimesis and Materials in Nature, Art and Science, edited by Marjolijn Bol and E.C. Spary.

Josh Davidson recently had a paper published in the open access journal Findings titled "A One-seat ride coverage ratio using administrative origin-destination data" that develops new spatial metrics for public transit accessibility.

Professor of Studio Art Julia Christensen was invited to present at the Frank-Ratchye STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University on March 23 about her non-profit, The Space Song Foundation, and her global public art project/space mission, The Tree of Life. Christensen will also present the project at the Interplanetary Small Satellite Conference at CalTech in May, on the panel, "Incoming planned missions and innovative mission concepts."

“Music Received Column," a bibliography of recently published music scores in Notes: The Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association. Compiled by Kathleen A. Abromeit.

Recent columns have included:

• Vol. 77, No. 3, Works by BIPOC composers and women with Jake Balmuth ’23.
• Vol. 77, No. 4 and 78, No.1, Works by LGBTQIA composers with Jake Balmuth ’23.
• Vol. 78, No. 2, Works by Latin American women with Jake Balmuth ’23.
• Vol. 78, No. 3, Works for solo guitar by women composers with Eliza Balmuth ’23.
• Vol. 79, No. 1, String quartets by Black composers with Jake Balmuth ’23.
• Vol. 79, No. 3, Musical settings of Black poetry with Gwen Gemmel ’23.

Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón wrote and translated an audio fiction story for the new season of La Brega: Stories of the Puerto Rican Experience, hailed as one of the “Best Podcasts of 2021” by The New Yorker and The New York Times. Following host Alana Casanova Burgess' prompt about taking the classic Puerto Rican anthem "Boricua En La Luna” literally, the story speculates about what would happen if someone Puerto Rican were actually born on the moon? A Zoom conversation about the podcast and the episode, hosted by the Center of Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College (CENTRO) took place on March 16.

Associate Professor of Computer Science Cynthia Taylor published an interview with Barbara Ericson in Inroads Magazine. The interview discusses Professor Ericson's work on online CS textbooks and Parson's Problems, and is part of a series on how education researchers can encourage faculty adoption of educational innovations.