Professional activities and accomplishments of Sarah Lawrence faculty.
A new book of poetry by Tina Chang (writing) will be published by W. W. Norton in May 2019. Hybrida, Chang’s third poetry collection, explores motherhood and mixed race. In 2010, she was the first woman to be named Poet Laureate of Brooklyn—a title she continues to hold.
In August, Shamus Clisset (visual and studio arts) was one of 15 international artists whose work was exhibited at Annka Kultys Gallery in London as part of the show Terms and Conditions May Apply, which examined themes of surveillance. Clisset was interviewed by United Kingdom-based DATEAGLE ART about his submission New Empire, a computer simulation centered on the Freedom Tower.
Kevin Confoy (theatre) played Robert Sugarman in the premiere of OURS by Alexis Roblan at Dixon Place in New York City in May. Roblan’s one-character play employed wraparound projections and a chorus of voices in its exploration of responsibility, trauma, positive thinking—and aliens.
In July, St. Augustine’s Press published a Festschrift honoring the career of Michael Davis (philosophy), titled Writing the Poetic Soul of Philosophy: Essays in Honor of Michael Davis. The book was edited by Denise Schaeffer ’90, now a professor in the political science department and director of strategic initiatives at College of the Holy Cross. Schaeffer also contributed writing to the volume, as did Abraham Anderson (philosophy) and Gwenda-lin Grewal ’06, a former Sarah Lawrence faculty member in philosophy. The Festschrift was presented at a dinner on August 17 at the Cornell Club of New York, with approximately 75 friends, colleagues, and alumni from around the country in attendance. Former Sarah Lawrence philosophy faculty member Marina Vitkin was one of several guests to offer remarks.
In May, Mary Dillard (history; director, Women’s History Program) was accepted to participate in the National Women’s Studies Association’s 2018 Women of Color Leadership Project. She will attend the group’s conference—JUST IMAGINE. IMAGINING JUSTICE: Feminist visions of freedom, dream making, and the radical politics of futures—in Atlanta this fall. Dillard is also continuing research for her book A Permanent Inheritance: Determinants of Nigerian American Educational Success, for which she is collecting oral histories of first- and second-generation Nigerian immigrants in Houston, Texas, and Central Florida. The book will examine the factors that contribute to the tremendous educational success of this understudied but influential group of immigrants to the US. In addition, Dillard served as a panelist at the Black History Month event To Be So Confin’d: Complexities of Slavery in 18th Century New York at Philipse Manor Hall State Historic Site in Yonkers. She discussed the legacy of slavery, the differences between slavery in New York and other parts of the US, reparations, and the history of Yonkers and the Philipse family with regard to slave trading in New York State.
Jerrilynn Dodds (art history) will be awarded a medal from the Spanish government on October 23. The Cross of the Order of Civil Merit is one of two medals the country’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs grants to Spanish citizens or foreigners who have “rendered distinguished services to Spain.” Juan José Herrera de la Muela, Consul for Cultural Affairs at the Consulate General of Spain, New York, notes: “Professor Dodds is an eminent Hispanicist. She has made outstanding contributions to the study of the medieval and early-modern states that emerged on the Iberian Peninsula, an understanding of which is essential to our comprehension of present-day Spain. She has authoritatively imparted, in the United States and beyond, a critical understanding of Spain’s history. In numerous publications on Spanish art and architecture, Professor Dodds has convincingly argued for the necessity of studying the complex processes of cultural interaction that took place between the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim communities of the Iberian Peninsula. Furthermore, as a distinguished teacher at Sarah Lawrence College, Professor Dodds has explored innovative ways of teaching Spanish art and history.” Past recipients of the Cross of the Order of Civil Merit include Dr. Louise Mirrer, president and CEO of the New-York Historical Society.
In July, Roland Dollinger (German; literature) gave a lecture about his book Sehnsucht nach Sinn at the University of Dnipro, Ukraine. The book’s title translates to “longing for a meaningful life” and concerns select authors’ questions about the nature of meaningful existence in the wake of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s declaration that God was dead.
Charlotte Doyle was awarded the Lipkin Family Prize for Inspirational Teaching for 2018-19. Each year, this prize recognizes a faculty member “whose generosity of time and talent draws from students both high performance and a lifelong love of learning.” Doyle was selected by the president and the Advisory Committee on Faculty Appointments.
Margarita Fajardo (history) is back at Sarah Lawrence this fall after taking a yearlong leave to participate in a research fellowship at Duke University’s Center for the History of Political Economy in North Carolina. Fajardo took the opportunity to work on her manuscript The World that Latin America Created. The book, focused on a transnational network of influential economists, sociologists, and policymakers, will be an intellectual history of capitalism from the Global South that recasts the origins of dependency theory.
Writing by Suzanne Gardinier (writing) appeared in Poemas desde el fuego (Poems from the Fire), published this year by Mexican press La Herrata Feliz Ediciones. The book presents the work of 12 American poets translated into Spanish by Margaret Randall and María Vázquez Valdez. In May, Gardinier read at a celebration honoring Adrienne Rich at Word Up, a volunteer-run, multilingual bookstore in Upper Manhattan. Former Sarah Lawrence guest writing faculty members Aracelis Girmay and Rachel Eliza Griffiths MFA ’06 also read. Additionally, Gardinier participated in the panel discussion “We’re On: Writers in Conversation about how the June Jordan Reader can carry us into new forms of revolution” at A Tribute to June Jordan. The conference took place at the City University of New York Graduate Center. Gardinier was joined on the panel by Rachel Eliza Griffiths and former Sarah Lawrence writing faculty member Patricia Spears Jones. Also in May, Gardinier participated in a two-day workshop for poets at Staton Correctional Facility in Elmore, Alabama, through the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project at Auburn University, an organization founded and directed by Kyes Stevens MA ’99, MFA ’00. In June, Gardinier presented “Free Speech, Slave Republics, and the Balconies of El Mina” at the American Association of University Professors’ Annual Conference on the State of Higher Education in Washington, DC.
From February to May, work by Tishan Hsu (visual and studio arts) was displayed at the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, as part of the exhibition Brand New: Art and Commodity in the 1980s. In March, Hsu was featured in the show Empty Gallery, part of The Armory Show in New York City, and in March and April in the show Guarded Future II at Downs & Ross in Manhattan’s Chinatown. His work is also on view at Bard College’s Hessel Museum of Art through December in the exhibition The Conditions of Being Art: Pat Hearn Gallery & American Fine Arts, Co. (1983-2004).
London’s Art in Perpetuity Trust invited Vera Iliatova (visual and studio arts) to participate in the June exhibition Slatterns. As part of the exhibition programming, Iliatova participated on a panel at the daylong symposium I See You Seeing Me: Engaging the Female Gaze in Visual Art and Poetry. International poetry magazine Poetry London published works by six women poets who were commissioned to respond to the six women artists in the show. In July, Iliatova co-organized an exhibition of artworks on paper by 30 American artists for the Free University of Tbilisi, Georgia. The show included works by Sarah Lawrence studio and visual arts faculty members Gary Burnley, John O’Connor, and Yevgeniya Baras. Also in July, the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) and the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA) awarded Iliatova a NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship.
In February, James Marshall (computer science) co-organized the workshop “Deep Learning in the Classroom” for the Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE) 2018 Technical Symposium in Baltimore. The annual event is SIGCSE’s flagship conference; 2018 marked its 49th year, and set a new attendance record with more than 1,750 registrants. Deep learning is a subarea of artificial intelligence research.
Nicolaus Mills (literature) published the articles “Roseanne in Trumpland” in Dissent magazine (June 4); “Trump Should Emulate Reagan’s Apology to WWII Internees” in The Daily Beast (July 5); and “Empathy Is the Kryptonite We Need to Vanquish Trump” in The Daily Beast (July 21).
The short story “Tolstoy and God” by Brian Morton ’78 (writing) was originally published in the 84th volume of Boston University-based literary magazine AGNI in 2016. The story was selected for a Pushcart Prize in 2017 and now appears in The Pushcart Prize XLII: Best of the Small Presses 2018 Edition.
In 2018, Jamee K. Moudud (economics) joined the board of the Association for the Promotion of Political Economy and the Law (APPEAL), a nonprofit dedicated to the promotion of scholarship and research in the areas of economics and the law. He also became chair of the strategic planning committee of the new Journal of Law and Political Economy, which will be published by the University of California Press. In June, Moudud presented the paper “Analyzing the Constitutional Theory of Money: Governance, Power, and Instability” at the Monetary Sovereignty Mini-Conference at Harvard Law School, a part of the Institute for Global Law and Policy conference Law in Global Political Economy: Heterodoxy Now. Later that month, he presented the paper at the APPEAL-PERI Political Economy and the Law Workshop. Focusing on the theme Connecting Ideas and Policies for Change, the three-day gathering was hosted and co-sponsored by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Moudud also gave the talk “Property, Markets, and Money: A 10-Minute Critical Excursion of Neoclassical Microeconomics” during the workshop. In September, he co-presented the paper “Fiscal Policy Space, Foreign Debt, and Power Struggles: Legal Foundations” at the Union for Radical Political Economics’ 50th Anniversary Conference and Celebration at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Priscilla Murolo (history) spoke on the panel “The Militant History of Public Sector Unions” at the biannual Labor Notes conference in Chicago in April. In June, she published the essay “Five Lessons from the History of Public Sector Unions” on Labor Notes’ website. The essay deals with the history of labor activism in the public sector and was widely reprinted. In August, The New Press released a revised and updated edition of Murolo’s book From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend: An Illustrated History of Labor in the United States, which was co-authored by her husband, Ben Chitty. Murolo’s work on the new edition was supported by a Get It Done Award from Sarah Lawrence. Each spring, the award funds a course release for one faculty member who is finishing an extended project.
In February, Dennis Nurkse (writing) published the poem “Mozart’s Final Hour” in The New Yorker and spoke on a panel at the Brooklyn Public Library for its Gwendolyn Brooks Centenary Tribute. While a visiting writer at Vermont Studio Center in April, Nurkse conducted readings and lectures on Spanish poet Federico García Lorca. In July, The Times Literary Supplement published his poem “Late Summer in the Little Mountains.” Also this summer, Virginia Quarterly Review published his poems “Victory” and “The Lord of Childhood.”
John O’Connor (visual and studio arts) was awarded College funds for the 2018-19 academic year through an arts and technology grant. He is using the award to continue his exploration of the relationships between spoken language and written text—especially as they are used to influence political thought. He is collaborating on this work with students and alumni, particularly Jack Colton ’17. Their current project is an extension of O’Connor’s Verbolect, which was exhibited at Pierogi’s Brooklyn space The Boiler in fall 2017, and on which Colton was also a collaborator.
In April, Kevin Pilkington (writing) read at the Carriage House Poetry Series in Fanwood, New Jersey. In August, he taught a weeklong poetry workshop at Maine Media Workshops + College in Rockport, Maine. His poem “Elephants, August: 3AM, Cake” appeared in the spring 2018 issue of Inkwell Journal, published by the Manhattanville College MFA Creative Writing Program. In September, his poem “Taking Risks, Bob’s Tavern” was published in Exit 13 Magazine.
Liz Prince (theatre) designed the costumes for Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company’s Analogy Trilogy, which was performed in its six-and-a-half-hour entirety (a rare occurrence) during two “marathon performances” at the New York University Skirball Center for the Performing Arts in September. Prince also designed the costumes for a dance performance by Seán Curran Company and Third Coast Percussion. Abstract Concrete makes its New York premiere in October as part of the program Everywhere All the Time at Brooklyn Academy of Music’s 2018 Next Wave Festival.
At the interdisciplinary conference Corporeal Restrictions, Embodied Freedoms: Italian Interventions on the Body, held in April at the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute at Queens College, City University of New York, Tristana Rorandelli (Italian; literature) presented the paper “Paola Masino’s Short Story ‘A Modo Loro’: A Critique of the Effects of Fascism’s Gender Policies and the Demographic Campaign on Italian Women.” She also presented the paper in June at the Women’s Studies Caucus at the American Association for Italian Studies’ 2018 conference, held at the Sant’Anna Institute in Sorrento, Italy. Her presentation was part of the panel “La Narrativa Di Paola Masino,” which she also co-organized.
In late June, Shahnaz Rouse (sociology) attended the Development Studies Association’s annual conference in Manchester, United Kingdom, through a grant from the College’s Faith Whitney Ziesing Fund in Social Sciences. There, she co-convened the panel “Knowledge Circulation Within the Social Sciences: A Global Inequality Concern?” In July, she attended the World Congress for Middle Eastern Studies (WOCMES), which takes place every four years; this year, it was held in Seville, Spain. Rouse organized a panel for the event titled “Translating Bodies: Interstices of Power, Practice, Activism,” during which she presented her paper “Spaces of Modernity, Histories of Feminism: Local, National, Transnational Imaginaries and Legacies.” Her participation at WOCMES was enabled by a Sarah Lawrence Faculty Research and Development Grant. Rouse is currently in the process of editing a draft of her extended paper “The State of Lahore Under Colonialism: A Political Economic Analysis,” which will be published as part of a book about the economic history of Pakistan or as a stand-alone monograph by the Graduate Institute of Development Studies at the Lahore School of Economics, where Rouse spent three months of her sabbatical last year. She spent most of summer 2018 writing, editing, and consulting archival material in London in conjunction with this work.
Mark R. Shulman (history) contributed the chapter “From Inspiration to Aspiration: Realizing FDR’s Four Freedoms” to Enduring Ideals: Rockwell, Roosevelt & the Four Freedoms, the hardcover, nearly 200-page catalog for the first comprehensive traveling exhibition devoted to Norman Rockwell’s iconic depictions of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms. The catalog was published by Abbeville Press in May. In July, Schulman taught the course “War or Peace?” at China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing.
Improvement, the latest novel by Joan Silber ’67 (writing), won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction in March and the PEN/Faulkner Award in April. In the citation presented to Silber, Tom Beer, chair of the National Book Critics Circle’s fiction committee, wrote: “Some writers wow us with verbal pyrotechnics and wildly outrageous scenarios. Others ply their trade more quietly—relying on subtle language and profound insight into human nature, making art of everyday lives. Joan Silber belongs to the latter category, and nowhere are her gifts on better display than in her seventh work of fiction, Improvement.”
Joel Sternfeld (visual and studio arts) curated the exhibition Landscapes after Ruskin: Redefining the Sublime, which was on view at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery between April and July. The exhibit was previously shown at the Hall Art Foundation in Reading, Vermont. In conjunction with the NYU exhibition, the symposium Super/Natural: Excess, Ecologies, and Art in the Americas took place at the City University of New York Graduate Center and at the New York University Institute of Fine Arts over two days in April. Also in conjunction with the exhibition, Sternfeld took part in the panel discussion “Art in a Dark Time” at the New York University Silver Center for Arts and Science in April. In May, The Financial Times ran a feature about the exhibition, and Sternfeld discussed it and its accompanying book with contributing writer Chris Wiley at Manhattan’s 92nd Street Y in June.
Komozi Woodard (history) attended the auction of a collection of previously unpublished autobiographical writing by Malcolm X at a Manhattan auction house in July. A New York Times article about the writings quoted Woodard and mentioned his forthcoming book about the final year of Malcolm X’s life. Also in July, Woodard spoke at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture about the 1967 Newark and Detroit Rebellions as part of the Clement A. Price lecture series.
An audiobook version of Barren Island by Carol Zoref ’76, MFA ’97 (director, The Writing Center) was released in March 2018. The book is narrated by Elizabeth Wiley, who has won AudioFile magazine Earphones Awards and been nominated for Voice Arts Awards and an Audie Award. Zoref gave readings of the book in April at an SLC Alumni Association arts salon and a Scarsdale Public Library literary salon; in May at the Jewish Book Council in New York City; in June at Beth Tikvah in Naples, Florida; and in July at Book Culture on Columbus in Manhattan, presented by the College’s Office of Alumni Relations and Harper’s Magazine.