Faculty and Staff Notes

Associate Professor of Music Theory Megan Kaes Long published an article, “What do Signatures Signify? The Curious Case of Seventeenth-Century English Key,” in the most recent issue of the Journal for Music Theory. The article traces how key signatures transformed from a feature of notation to an aspect of music theory in seventeenth-century England.

Chanda Feldman, assistant professor of Creative Writing, is interviewed with poet Erika Meitner by Sally Bliumus-Dunn in the latest issue of Plume Journal. Feldman discusses and reads her own poetry, talks about craft choices and race, and discusses her current writing project.Feldman discusses and reads her own poetry, talks about craft choices and race, and discusses her current writing project.

Roderic Knight, Professor Emeritus of Ethnomusicology at Oberlin College and Conservatory, presented an illustrated online program about Elisha Gray for the Oberlin Heritage Center in December 2020. Gray was an Ohio native who attended Oberlin College in the 1860s and who became a successful inventor and entrepreneur before returning to Oberlin College as a Professor of Dynamic Electricity from 1880-1900. Gray was also the inventor of the world's first electric musical instrument—the Electro-Harmonic Telegraph—in 1875. You can view Knight's entire 45-minute talk and presentation of Gray’s inventions on the Oberlin Heritage Center’s YouTube channel.

Sandra Zagarell, visiting Donald R. Longman emerita professor of English, presented a talk titled “Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s Political Artistry: What The Archive Tells Us” in the virtual symposium “If I Had Known: Education, Performance, Activism," which honored the life and legacy of Alice Dunbar-Nelson. The symposium, which took place on November 6, 2020, and was recorded, was sponsored by the University of Delaware Library Museums and Press. Tt will be available to the public in 2021.

Yorki Encalada Egúsquiza, faculty in residence at La Casa Hispánica and lecturer in Hispanic Studies, published "El Bildungsroman femenino catalano-marroquí en El último patriarca (2008)" in the scholarly journal Polifonía. The article studies how Moroccan-Catalan author Najat El Hachmi constructs a transnational Bildungsroman to highlight her protagonist's Catalan identity.

Anna Levett, visiting assistant professor of comparative literature, published an article, ‘‘Ecstatic Communities: Sufism, Modernism, and Political Possibility in Abdelwahab Meddeb's Talismano,’’ in the winter 2020 issue of Expressions maghrébines. This special issue is devoted to the work of Tunisian writer, translator, and public intellectual Abdelwahab Meddeb (1946-2014).

Christ Jenkins, conservatory associate dean for academic support, published an article on African American violists from the 20th century in the fall 2020 volume of the Journal of the American Viola Society.

Associate Professor of Voice Katherine Jolly has been accepted into the 2021 cohort for the Higher Education Leadership institute (HERS/HLI). She is one of 20 women in academia throughout the nation who will engage in an intensive four-month program, beginning in January 2021, designed to challenge and train the next generation of higher education leadership. Jolly’s work in HERS will culminate in a self-designed capstone project involving the conservatory.

The National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity (NCFDD) hired Yveline Alexis, associate professor of Africana studies and Comparative American studies, as one of its coaches for is faculty success program for 2021.

Md Rumi Shammin is currently collaborating with Professor Enamul Haque of East West University (Bangladesh), Professor Pranab Mukhopadhyay of Goa University (India), and Mani Nepal of the South Asian Network of Development and Environmental Economics (Nepal) as coeditors of a volume called Climate Change and Community Resilience: Insights from South Asia.

The book will be published by Springer Nature in 2021 and includes several chapters coauthored by Prof. Shammin that represent a decade of fieldwork and research in climate-vulnerable communities of Bangladesh.