Faculty and Staff Notes

Visiting Assistant Professor of Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies Anna Lordan led an online workshop with the Nobel Prize-winning Center for Civil Liberties in Kyiv, Ukraine, on the poetry of Victoria Amelina, the writer and war crimes researcher who was killed by a Russian missile attack in June 2023.

Read more about Anna Lordan

Through the University of Michigan’s National Center for Institutional Diversity, Associate Dean for Academic Support, Chris Jenkins published a blog post titled “Radically Transforming Classical Music” on Medium, part of a larger set of works focused on exploration across musical genres. For the American Viola Society, he released a recording of Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson’s Blue/s Forms on solo viola, available on YouTube and Spotify.

An article by Multifaith Chaplain and Director of Sustained Dialogue David Dorsey on Oberlin’s Barefoot Dialogue was published in Unfolding: University Chaplaincy in Practice. Conceived by Dorsey 12 years ago, Barefoot teaches each individual to hold dignity for all in what is said, heard, experienced, and all that surrounds.

Assistant Professor of German Jessica Resvick published a chapter in the edited volume A Companion to the Works of Adalbert Stifter. Her chapter focuses on the first two versions of the novel My Great-Grandfather’s Notebook and traces out a particular orientation to the past that lies at the heart of the great 19th-century writer’s works.

Assistant Director in the Office for Institutional Equity Suzanne Denneen and PRSM members Calliope Lissak ’25 and Charlotte Sturm ’25 presented at the annual Ohio College Personnel Association conference on February 11 about Oberlin’s unique three-part, peer-led, in-person consent training program that meets and exceeds Title IX training requirements.

Professor of Musicology Charles McGuire spent most of the month of January in the United Kingdom. After teaching the Music in London Winter Term Project to 16 Oberlin students, he traveled to Southampton, where he spent two days as the Hartley Resident. McGuire presented a paper entitled “Victorian Tonic Sol-fa Festivals: Building the Nation and Empire Through Sight-Singing;” co-taught a graduate seminar with Erin Johnson-Williams of Southampton and Ellan Lincoln-Hyde of King’s College, London; and was part of a roundtable discussion entitled “Music, Mission, Empire."

Professor of Music Theory Jan Miyake and Associate Professor of Music Theory Andrew Pau have contributed chapters to Modeling Musical Analysis (Oxford University Press, 2024), a collection of essays written by minoritized scholars and designed to model analytical writing for undergraduate students. Miyake’s essay discusses the Funeral March from Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, while Pau’s explores Richard Danielpour and Toni Morrison’s 2005 opera Margaret Garner.

Studio Arts Lecturer in Drawing and Reproducible Media R Kauff received an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, an award for outstanding work and grant for developing new projects.

Visiting Assistant Professor of Hispanic Studies Yorki J. Encalada Egúsquiza's article "Desarrollo de una nueva consciencia mestiza a través de la valoración del arte comunitario fronterizo en la narrativa de Roberta Fernández" was published in Polifonía. The article explores how female solidarity and community border art expands Gloria Anzaldúa's concept of mestiza consciousness and its traditional identity crisis focus.

Associate Professor of Africana Studies and Comparative American Studies Yveline Alexis authored the book Haiti Fights Back: The Life and Legacy of Charlemagne Péralte (Rutgers University Press). Her book tour included a January stop at Possible Futures in New Haven, Connecticut, alongside Rhodes Scholar Nadine Pinede and poet Marilyn Pierre.