Faculty and Staff Notes

Assistant Professor of Art History Matthew Rarey's article, "Never at Rest: African Art at the University of Wisconsin" was published in the winter 2020 issue of African Arts. Rarey authored the essay along with Henry John Drewal, Evjue-Bascom Professor Emeritus of Art History and Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

An article by Steven Volk, professor of history emeritus, and Beth Benedix, "Liberal Arts Colleges Must Rediscover Their Purpose: To Improve the World," appeared in Times Higher Education (London).

What I Remember of My Love Affair with the Bird and Other Stories, a chapbook collection of short fiction by Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Tom Hopkins, was published on November 20 by The Cupboard Pamphlet, a small press based in Denver and Cleveland. Three of the five writers who wrote advance praise for the book are Oberlin alumni: Gary Shteyngart ’95, Matthew Sharpe ’85, and Abbey Mei Otis ’11.

Yveline Alexis is part of a team that planned a fundraiser for Ayiti Community Trust. We raised funds to help support organizations based in Haiti that are headed by Haitians.  View the full global program in multiple language formats. 

Conservatory Technical Director and Lecturer Abby Aresty and Rachel Gibson '20 presented a workshop on STEAM education and experiential, community-engaged learning at the 2020 AAC&U Transforming STEM Higher Education Conference.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics Henrique Veras gave a virtual presentation of his paper, "Wrong Place, Wrong Time: The Long-Run Effects of In-Utero Exposure to Malaria on Educational Attainment in Brazil" at Skidmore College on October 28, 2020. On November 6, 2020, Veras presented virtually "Pull Up a Chair: Municipal Council Size and Local Taxes in Brazil" at the annual NEUDC conference (North East Universities Development Consortium) at Dartmouth University. This paper is joint with Oberlin Associate Professor of Economics Evan Kresch and economics research assistant Meredith Walker '22.

Professor of Chinese and Cinema Studies Hsiu-Chuang Deppman published a new book, Close-ups and Long Shots in Modern Chinese Cinemas (University of Hawaii Press). Two of the most stylized shots in cinema—the close-up and the long shot—embody distinct attractions. The iconicity of the close-up magnifies the affective power of faces and elevates film to the discourse of art. The depth of the long shot, in contrast, indexes the facts of life and reinforces our faith in reality. Each configures the relation between image and distance that expands the viewer’s power to see, feel, and conceive. 

On October 23, 2020, Jennifer Fraser presented a paper titled “Teaching as Scholarship or, How My Students Have Made Me a Better Ethnomusicologist,” as part of a panel, “Ethnomusicology as a Liberal Art: Pedagogy, Disciplinarity, and Institutionalization at the Educational Crossroads” at the annual Society for Ethnomusicology conference. Fellow panelists included Jeffers Engelhardt at Amherst College, Morgan Luker at Reed College, and Whitney Slaten at Bard College. Several Oberlin alumni participated as part of the audience, including Alicia Lola Jones, faculty at Indiana University and Christian James, graduate student, at Indiana University. 

Kara Leaman was a guest speaker on an episode of The Washington Ballet’s Barre Talk, a virtual public interview series. She spoke on her research on George Balanchine’s ballets. 

Kristina Mani was quoted in a Vox story on the Chilean plebiscite. Mani was also interviewed and quoted in another article about the militarized response to the pandemic in Latin America.