Faculty and Staff Notes

Gerald Cannon has been appointed associate professor of jazz bass at Oberlin Conservatory after a two year stint as a visiting professor. The multi-talented sideman, leader, composer, recording artist, and painter has taught in master classes across the United States and Europe, and has served on the faculties of the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music, the New School, Long Island University, the Conservatory of Maastricht in Holland, and the Juilliard School. He performed with the Oberlin Jazz Ensemble and Oberlin's complete roster of jazz faculty in a special performance at Finney Chapel on March 28.

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 Chanda Feldman has a new poem, "Time for Open Air," in the latest issue (Spring 2022, Issue 34) of the University of Colorado Denver literary journal, Copper Nickel.

Assistant Professor of Dance Al Evangelista recently had his screendance "Dragon Fruit" selected for three film festival premieres. "Dragon Fruit" will make its Midwest premiere at RAD Fest, Pacific Northwest premiere at Disorient, and international premiere at Queerbee.

On February 25, Routledge published Professor of Politics and of East Asian Studies Marc Blecher’s two newest books: Class and the Communist Party of China, 1921-1978; and Class and the Communist Party of China, 1978-2021.

Blecher coauthored the books with colleagues from Harvard, Sciences Po, the University of Sydney, and Xi’an Jiaotong Liwupu University (in Suzhou, China). To mark the Chinese Communist Party’s 100th anniversary, the scholars put together this project of research, writing, and conferences on its century-long encounter with the question of class. 

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.

Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Comparative American Studies Yveline Alexis gave a talk on Haiti's Independence Day Soup (Soup Joumou) for the African-American fraternity Omega Psi Phi at Tufts University. Planners included a nutrition graduate student (Diego Meritus) and their Africana Studies Department. Organizers partnered with Haitian restaurants who served the delicious soup to the attendees. 

Associate Professor of French and Cinema Studies Grace An co-edited a special issue of French Screen Studies on French documentary film and the ethics of care since 1968. Articles in the issue explore films that addresse topics including education, migration and refugees, disability, incarceration, and postcolonial trauma. An authored the article "Care across divides: militant abortion and film around the Veil Law," which discusses the ways feminists and activist doctors sought alternative practices of reproductive care and justice during the years that led to the legalization of abortion in 1975. Reframing abortion as a labor of care, the filmmakers filmed an ethics of care avant la lettre, just years before the ethics of care was conceived during the 1980s in the U.S., yet developed eventually in France. This article benefitted from the insight and research conducted by Amelia Connelly, Lillian Enoch, Skylar Kleinman, Alison Simonds, Daisy Vollen, and Kiki Widran during the first Junior Practicum (Fall 2020). French Screen Studies is the only English-language academic journal to focus exclusively on French cinema and media.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature Anna Levett has published a review of The Albert Memmi Reader in the Journal of North African Studies.

Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Chanda Feldman is one of 25 fellows selected from more than 900 applicants for an artist residency at Loghaven Artist Residency in 2022.