Faculty Accomplishments
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Photographer and Professor of Art Gary Green held an interview with About Photography, a monthly newsletter from the Czech Republic, and discussed his iconic photographs of the punk rock scene in New York City in the late 1970s. When asked to reflect on the punk scene's lasting impact on music and culture, he answered, "That era remains a touchstone for a lot of the DIY world, including a plethora of zines, self-produced music and books, and a whole range of indie bands that all owe a debt to the raw energy of The Ramones, Patti Smith, The Velvets, The New York Dolls, The Sex Pistols, The Clash and so on. I think a lot of those bands demystified putting together a band and making records."
Raffael Scheck, the John J. and Cornelia V. Gibson Chair in History, has published his seventh book. The book is titled Spring 1940: How People in Europe Experienced the Western Campaign (Hoffmann & Campe, Hamburg, 2024) and is written in German, Scheck's mother tongue. The book builds on diaries and letters from German, Belgian, and French soldiers and civilians, as well as records from the British soldiers deployed in France and Belgium. Its central argument is that most contemporaries experienced the defeat of France and its allies in May-June 1940 as the decision and conclusion of World War I. Much of the fighting (and, for the British and French, the preparations during the phony war) took place on the old World War I battlefields and near the giant cemeteries. For Germans, their victory seemed to give meaning to the two million dead German soldiers of 1914-18, and they were extremely thankful to Hitler for providing this (apparent) closure. For the Nazi regime, the presence of Black soldiers in the French army bolstered its racist narrative that a "racially purified" Germany had defeated a "degenerate" France, and the Nazis used the victory as a "proof" for their racial theories. Millions of Belgian and French civilians, driven from their homes by fearful memories of German occupation in World War I, accepted that this campaign had decided World War I and that they would live in a German-dominated Europe. German moderation, even friendliness, toward civilians and European soldiers (but not toward African prisoners of war) eased this transition. For only a few, the campaign in western Europe did not only conclude World War I, but also really started World War II.
Assistant Professor of Spanish Tiffany Creegan Miller recently was a guest on CulturalStudies, a podcast about the politics of culture. She discussed about her recent book, The Maya Art of Speaking Writing: Remediating Indigenous Orality in the Digital Age, as well as the work in support of reproductive justice that's happening now at the Oak Institute for Human Rights.
Professor of Mathematics Scott Taylor received a $5,700 grant to support Sum Camp, a day camp in Waterville that uses the arts and math games to build numeracy. This new support for Sum Camp is provided by the Mathematical Association of America and the John and Mary Neff Foundation. Taylor will use the grant to implement a program called “Multiply the Math,” which will help him infuse mathematical conversations into every aspect of the camp, tying together mathematical themes that occur organically across the camp day.
The latest collection of poetry by Professor of English and Creative Writing Adrian Blevins, Status Pending, is a finalist for the Maine Literary Awards, presented by the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Status Pending (Four Way Books, 2023) is Blevins four collection of poems, hailed by critics as "a magical book" that "finds uncommon delight in common words, vernacular syntax and a range of playful poetic forms."
Tanya Sheehan, the Ellerton M. and Edith K. Jetté Professor of Art, delivered an invited lecture at Kenyon College's Gund Gallery in Gambier, Ohio, April 8, 2024. Titled “Public Art, Public Health: Jacob Lawrence and the Murals of Harlem Hospital,” her presentation examined representations of race, medicine, and health in Harlem between the 1930s and '50s. Sheehan explores this subject in depth in her current book project, which focuses on the art of Lawrence, his mentor Charles Alston, and the team of muralists Alston supervised at Harlem Hospital in 1936-40. Click here for an image of Sheehan lecturing in the Gund Gallery.
Assistant Professor of Art, Digital Media Takahiro Suzuki has had two of his films screened at festival across the country. His film electric moonlight & the language within the leaves was shown at the Wisconsin Film Festival in Madison April 6 - 11 and at the Wide Open Experimental Film Festival in Oklahoma City April 26-28. The Odds & Ends Experimental Film Festival in Charlottesville, Va., showed his film The Hungry Ghost & The Earthshaker April 6. Suzuki's creative research practice utilizes forms in both still and moving imagery, primarily making experimental film and video artworks.
Tanya Sheehan, the Ellerton M. and Edith K. Jetté Professor of Art, and art historian Suzanne Hudson of the University of Southern California co-edited a Critics Page for the independent monthly magazine the Brooklyn Rail. The contributions they assembled for publication in the March 2024 issue—by 21 artists, curators, and academics—examine visual art’s relationship to the discourses and spaces of healing since the emergence of Covid-19. The Critics Page builds upon conversations that Sheehan and Hudson co-curated for the Brooklyn Rail’s New Social Environment series in 2022. It also stems from their shared research interest in the history of modern art and art therapy.
Professor of Art Véronique Plesch participated in the First International Conference of the European Research Council project Graff-IT, Writing on the Margins: Graffiti in Italy and Beyond (7th–16th c.) with a paper titled “Graffiti on Frescoes: Typology, Models, Metaphors, and Critical Frameworks.” The conference took place April 10-12 at the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome (KNIR). Prior to the conference, Plesch taught in a graduate course of the same title, also at the KNIR. The course, coordinated by Prof. Marco Mostert from Utrecht University, gathered nine selected research M.A./Ph.D. students in classics, (art) history, general and comparative literature, heritage studies, cultural studies, or related disciplines from the KNIR partner universities (Universiteit van Amsterdam, Vrije Universiteit, Universiteit Leiden, Universiteit Utrecht, Radboud Universiteit, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen). Plesch was one of five lecturers (other faculty members came from Dutch and Italian universities) and lectured on “Graffiti and the History of Art.” The course took place April 5-13 (“enveloping” the international conference), and Plesch taught her course on April 9 and also participated in a visit to Jewish catacombs with the students.
Raffael Scheck, the John J. and Cornelia V. Gibson Chair in History, delivered a keynote address at a conference in Germany marking the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp of Buchenwald on April 11, 1945. His talk was titled "French Colonial Soldiers between Nazi Terror and Colonialism."