News & Events

James O'Leary, Oberlin Conservatory’s Frederick R. Selch Associate Professor of Musicology has been awarded the 2022 Virgil Thomson Fellowship from the Society for American Music. This competitive award aids scholars whose research interest is focused on the history, creation, and analysis of American music on stage and screen, including opera. O’Leary will use the award to continue working on a book about Stephen Sondheim that he started during the pandemic. This summer, O’Leary will be speaking about Sondheim at the Transnational Opera Studies Conference in Bayreuth, Germany.

Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Allegra Hyde had her debut novel Eleutheria reviewed by the LA Times. “Allegra Hyde’s climate-fiction narrator is the post-cynical heroine we need,” reads the review. “This is cli-fi even when it turns intimate, with the first kiss between lovers or the failures of addict parents. Individual tensions generate unexpected crackle, but everyone’s caught in the same toxic knots, their environment collapsing around them.” Additionally, Town & Country highlighted Eleutheria, calling it “A climate change novel, yes, but also a tale of searching for hope in dark times.” And BookPage wrote, “Fast-paced and dramatic, Eleutheria is a love story that plays out against the backdrop of a planet in trouble.” Electric Literature published an excerpt of Eleutheria in their “Recommended Reading Series,” with an introduction from the writer Lydia Conklin.

Professor of Politics Stephen Crowley recorded an interview about his recent book, Putin's Labor Dilemma, on the SRB Podcast. In November and December 2021 Crowley was a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Bologna.