Faculty Pursuits
School of the Arts
Kimberly Bartosik, dance, received nominations in December for 2020 Bessie Awards for Outstanding Production and Outstanding Performer (Burr Johnson) for her recent performance work, through the mirror of their eyes, which premiered at New York Live Arts in March 2020. It was also recently featured as part of New York Live Arts’ Live Artery Primetime virtual platform. In April 2020, Bartosik received a commission from the Onassis Foundation to create a quarantine project. The Game, a digital work featuring Bartosik, her spouse, and child, is a five-minute digital glimpse into the whacked-out emotions that were accumulating in their family in confinement. It was featured in The New York Times and Art Monthly UK. With visual artist Matthew Ritchie, Bartosik was commissioned to create a film as part of the Guggenheim’s Works & Process (WPA) Virtual Commissions. You will see more stars (2020) (Mac & Ryan film duet, excerpt) premiered on December 28 and continues to be available on YouTube. The work features Ryan Pliss ’14 and Mac Twining. You will see more stars is a multi-iteration, mixed reality work that will be revealed in a diverse variety of forms and formats over the next several years. A launch event in the form of a performative gathering was held on Oct. 20, 2020 at Pier 3 in Brooklyn Bridge Park and featured Lindsey Jones ’12 and Christian Allen ’15.
Darrah Carr, dance, premiered new dance films in online international festivals including Dancer from the Dance (Dublin, Ireland), Cáca Milis (Wexford, Ireland), NYC Irish Dance Festival (NYC), Tune Supply (NYC), Banshee (NYC), and Irish American Writers and Artists (NYC) during Summer 2020. Conservatory of Dance alumna Melissa Padham-Maass ’05 was a featured cast member. The films were hailed by The Irish Echo, which wrote, “During the lockdown, the company shot individual videos of their roles in backyards, parks, and apartments, demonstrating the power of dance to uplift in any setting.” Carr also presented her research during October’s National Dance Education Organization Conference.
Lenora Champagne, theatre and performance, was the inaugural recipient of the first Katherine Owens Playwriting Award from Undermain Theatre (Dallas, Texas). This $10,000 commission will allow continued collaboration on her new play, Feeding on Light, an exploration of the life and influence of French philosopher Simone Weil. The announcement was made on Oct. 27, Katherine Owens’ birthday. There was a Purchase workshop production of the play on Zoom on March 19 and 20 and an Undermain Zoom presentation the final week of March.
Alexis Cole, jazz studies, launched an online educational community in June. JazzVoice.com offers masterclasses and private lessons with top performers and educators including Cyrille Aimée ’09. With a monthly student membership model starting at just $15, learning from the greats has never been more affordable or accessible. Classes happen synchronously on Zoom and are recorded for later viewing as well. Students can book one-on-one lessons with a variety of Grammy® winning vocalists and college professors from top universities around the world, including former Purchase instructor Dena DeRose, now based in Austria.
Rebecca Haviland ’04, studio composition, released a holiday EP with her band Rebecca Haviland and Whiskey Heart titled A Holiday To Remember on Dec. 18, 2020. Haviland’s band consists of Purchase College jazz studies alumni including Kenny Shaw ’06 on drums and Chris Anderson MM ’06 on bass. The EP was produced by Paul Loren and Haviland, and also includes Nicky Barbato on guitar, Todd Caldwell on Hammond B3, Steven Salcedo on tenor and baritone saxophone, Jimmy O’Connell on trombone, and Matt Owens on trumpet. For more info check out www.rebeccahaviland.com.
Warren Lehrer, graphic design, was awarded a 2020 NYFA (New York Foundation for the Arts) Fellowship in the category of Digital/Electronic Arts. The 2020 NYSCA/NYFA Fellowship recognizes Lehrer’s recent work in animation and motion graphics for the 1001 Voices: Multimedia Symphony for a New America and Five Oceans in a Teaspoon projects. Lehrer is also the recipient of seven awards for his most recent book and multimedia project, Five Oceans in a Teaspoon (Paper Crown Press), a collaboration with poet Dennis J Bernstein. Other awards include the 2020 Independent Publisher (IPPY) Gold Medal Award for Poetry; the 2020 MUSE Creative Platinum Award in Book/Publication Design; the 2020 American Bookfest Best Book Award for Poetry; two 2020 Indigo Design Awards, one in Book Design, one in Mixed Media/Moving Image; the 2019 Design Incubation Scholarship: Creative Work Award; and the 2019 STA 100 (Society of Typographic Arts) Award.
Lenka Pichlíková, theatre and performance, defended her English-language doctoral dissertation on Russian actor and theatre pedagogue Michael Chekhov at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts in Prague in November 2020. Chekhov was one of the principal colleagues of Stanislavsky, expanding his technique for American actors. Pichlíková is teaching Chekhov’s method this term. She was asked to serve on the jury for the SCENE & HEARD Ensemble Acting Showcase & Competition in January 2021. The program featured more than 60 New York City high school students who performed online in their school ensembles.
Christopher Robbins, sculpture, with Ghana Think Tank, the organization he co-founded, and their partners received a $150,000 Kresge Foundation grant for their public art project, American Riad, which strives to combat social isolation in Detroit’s North End through a space devoted to community connection. The grant is part of the Kresge Innovative Projects: Detroit initiative, which funds new projects to transform Detroit neighborhoods through planning efforts like neighborhood hubs, green spaces, public art, and more. The American Riad project will eventually turn an empty 12-unit building, an abandoned house, and the vacant lot between them into eight low-income apartments and six businesses surrounding a Moroccan-inspired shared courtyard.
Jen Schriever, theatre design/technology, was presented with a Sustained Excellence in Lighting Design honor at this summer’s Obie Awards Ceremony in acknowledgment of her work on several productions this past season, including Broadbend, Arkansas; Tumacho; and the award-winning A Strange Loop. The A Strange Loop creative team also received a special citation award. When presenting Schriever with her award, presenter Clint Ramos honored her for her “seemingly limitless ability to transport us across vast distances to new and sometimes impossible locations.”
Anita Yavich, theatre design/technology, earned a 2020 Henry Hewes Design Award for her work on Soft Power at The Public Theatre. The Hewes Design Awards annually honor excellence in theatrical design, with awards for scenic, costume, lighting, sound design, and notable effects that suspend disbelief and bring shows to life. For the 2020 honors, 95 artists were nominated for outstanding artistry in 61 on-, off-, and off-off Broadway productions presented during the 2019-2020 New York theatre season.
Staff
Seth Soloway, formerly executive and artistic director of The Performing Arts Center, has departed Purchase for Nashville, TN to move into a role at The Vanderbilt University. He’s been appointed associate dean of presenting and external relations and director of the Martha Rivers Ingram Center for the Performing Arts at Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music.
Library
Nicole Helregel, Library, co-authored a three-chapter section on branding and communication in Marking Open and Affordable Courses: Best Practices and Case Studies, an open-access book published in May 2020. On June 19, 2020, Helregel presented a poster on the topic of “Preventing the Sophomore Slump: Information Literacy for Second-Year Science Undergraduates” at the American Library Association Annual Conference’s virtual Science and Technology poster session.
School of Liberal Arts & Sciences
Joel Neville Anderson, cinema studies and film, published “Pointing Through the Screen: Archiving, Surveillance, and Atomization in the Wake of Japan’s 2011 Triple Disasters,” a chapter in Routledge Handbook of Japanese Cinema, edited by Joanne Bernardi and Shota T. Ogawa (New York: Routledge, 2020). Anderson also published “Home Birth, World Cinema: Kawase Naomi’s Films in Circulation,” an article for a special issue of Studies in Documentary Film, Volume 14, No. 1 (2020). Edited by Kiki Tianqi Yu and Alisa Lebow, the special issue explores “Feminist Approaches in Women’s First Person Documentaries from East Asia.” Anderson curated the online JAPAN CUTS: Festival of New Japanese Film, which ran July 17-30, 2020. “JAPAN CUTS has unambiguously become America’s best annual showcase of new Japanese film,” wrote IndieWire.
Sara Cooper, playwriting and screenwriting, was the recipient of a 2020 Barrington Stage Company Spark Grant for her work as a musical theatre writer. A 15-minute excerpt of her new musical, Perpetual Sunshine & the Ghost Girls (words by Sara Cooper, music by Lynne Shankel), won the National Alliance for Musical Theatre 15-Minute Musical Challenge and was featured in February in collaboration with Baldwin Wallace and Beck Center for the Arts. Cooper’s TV pilot, Polyanna, was the 2020 BOLT Barnstorm Media Grand Jury Winner.
Linda Gironda, liberal studies, participated in the inaugural cohort of the SUNY COIL Global Commons in Summer 2020. Gironda’s course, International Perspectives on Reduced Inequalities with a Lens on Law & Social Justice, taught students from various SUNY campuses about United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 10 (UN SDG 10), reduced inequalities, and social justice. Students then applied their storytelling skills and UN SDG 10 knowledge to create marketing materials for Inkululeko, a South African NGO. The students interviewed Inkululeko employees (inkululeko means freedom) and created two impressive videos. One is about Inkululeko’s mission to challenge the legacy of apartheid, and the second looks at the psycho-social resources that Inkululeko provides to its students. For additional information, contact the organization director: marylou.forward@suny.edu
Allison Kahn, communications, was a recipient of the NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists 2020 Excellence in Travel Writing award for her CNN piece “Traveling as a Trans Person: It’s Complicated.” She has also been writing regularly for CNN on LGBTQ and other social issues.
Lisa Keller, history, is author of “Afterword” in New York: A Literary History, edited by Ross Wilson (Cambridge University Press, April 2020) and “Where Do You Live? The Broad Reach of the Seminar on the City” in A Community of Scholars: 75 Years of the University Seminars at Columbia (Columbia University Press, November 2020). She also reviewed Design for the Crowd: Patriotism and Protest in Union Square, by Joanna Merwood-Salisbury, in the November 2020 Journal of Urban Affairs. Keller was appointed to the boards of the Urban History Association and the Greater Hudson Heritage Network, both in January 2021.
Shaka McGlotten, media studies and anthropology, wrote two forthcoming books: Dragging: Or, In the Drag of a Queer Life, and, with Professor Emeritus Juan Forrest, Doing Fieldwork. In September, they were awarded a faculty fellowship at the New York City-based Data & Society Research Institute. In December, they gave an invited lecture at the Stanford Humanities Center as part of their Digital Aesthetics workshop series. They recently entered into a collaboration with the Andy Warhol | Creative Capital Arts Writers program and will be a featured author in its inaugural issue of a forthcoming book series. Finally, they were recently nominated to the board of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS).
Jeanine Meyer, mathematics/computer science, published two books with Takashi Mukoda ’19 (mathematics/computer science and new media): Origami with Explanations and More Origami with Explanations (World Scientific Publishing, 2021) (available now). Dr. Meyer is Professor Emerita in the mathematics/computer science department. The books are based on a course she taught, The Art and Math of Origami, first offered in Spring 2019 and Fall 2019. Takashi was a Learning Assistant. The course satisfies the SUNY CORE math requirement and will be offered in a remote format in Spring 2022.
Jason Pine, anthropology and media studies, received recognition for his book The Alchemy of Meth: A Decomposition (University of Minnesota Press, 2019) from both the Society for Cultural Anthropology and the Society for Humanistic Anthropology. It earned honorable mentions by the Society for Cultural Anthropology’s 2020 Gregory Bateson Book Prize and the Society for Humanistic Anthropology’s 2020 Victor Turner Prize in Ethnographic Writing. Pine was interviewed about the book on To The Best of Our Knowledge on Wisconsin Public Radio.
Edward Pomerantz, playwriting and screenwriting, announced that two of his original screenplays, Man Running and Real Love, were finalists in the Best Feature Script Category at the 2020 Beyond The Curve International Film Festival in Paris. His short film La Comida was also a finalist in the Best Short Film category in October 2020.
Cathryn J. Prince,journalism, continues to report on a wide range of subjects for The Times of Israel. Among her articles about the impact of COVID-19 in the New York region were the Nov. 20 article “U.S. Experts: Ongoing Coronavirus Health Crisis Taking Toll on Kids’ Mental Health” (Nov. 20) and “An Endless Hurricane: Study Probes Mental Toll as Medical Staff Battle COVID-19” (April 28). On January 8 she was interviewed on NPR’s “The Way We Live” about the 1807 Weston meteorite, which was the subject of her book A Professor, A President and a Meteor.
Megan Rossman, communication, won the audience award at the Paris Lesbian and Feminist Film Festival for her film, Naomi Replansky at 100, in November 2020. This short documentary explores the life of renowned poet Naomi Replanksy as she celebrates her 100th year.
Paul Siegel, psychology, recently published a brain imaging study in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet Psychiatry. Three former senior project mentees of Dr. Siegel are co-authors: Juliana Campos-Lopes ’14, Virginia Sims ’14, and Lilly Murray ’14. The other senior author of the study is Dr. Bradley S. Peterson, Director of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California. This team found that exposure to phobic images without conscious awareness activated brain circuits known to support the regulation of fear, and this circuit activation reduced avoidance of a live tarantula in highly phobic participants. Siegel was also awarded a $25,000 grant by the Keck School of Medicine and a $20,000 grant from the American Psychoanalytic Association to conduct an fMRI study based on his unconscious exposure paradigm to help U.S. combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) overcome their resistance to treatment.
Peggy Stafford, playwriting and screenwriting, wrote the short film 16 Words or Less, an official selection and finalist at the Austin Indie Fest as well as an official selection and semi-finalist at the Chicago Indie Film Awards.
Ragnhild Utheim, liberal studies and anthropology, and Lisa Jean Moore, sociology and gender studies, were awarded the SUNY Chancellor’s Grant for Innovative Study Abroad Programs (ISAP). Conceived of as a partnership between Purchase College and the University of Oslo, “Politics and Practices of Climate Change in Cross-Cultural Perspective in Norway” is an interdisciplinary program originally planned for Summer 2021 to address global environmental challenges by studying them locally. Utheim also published “Diversity and its Discontents: Deepening the Discourse” in the peer-reviewed journal Race and Pedagogy Journal: Teaching and Learning for Justice, Vol. 4: No. 4, Article 1 (2020).
Gary Waller, literature and theatre and performance, published The Female Baroque in Early Modern English Literary Culture: From Mary Sidney to Aphra Behn (Amsterdam University Press, April 2020).
Di Yu, liberal studies, co-authored three book chapters in the 2020 edited volume Communicating with the Public: Conversation Analytic Studies, published by Bloomsbury. In March 2021, she led a presentation at the 2021 American Association for Applied Linguistics (AAAL) conference titled “Metaphors in Action: A Conversation Analytic Account of Group Learning in the Science Classroom.”
Ling Zhang, cinema studies, published “Foreshadowing the Future of Capitalism: Surveillance Technology and Digital Realism in Xu Bing’s Dragonfly Eyes (2017)” in Comparative Cinema, Vol. VIII, No. 14, 62-81 on May 23, 2020. On Sept. 24, 2020, he presented “Politics of Sound: Cinematic Soundscape and Social Mobilization” at Nagoya University, Japan via Zoom.