Prologue

Actress Kirsten Dunst, left, and co-star Théodore Pellerin film a scene for On Becoming a God in Central Florida, a quirky Showtime comedy created by alumnus Robert Funke about a cultish, Amway-like marketing scheme. Courtesy of SHOWTIME On Becoming a God in Central Florida is an oddly academic-sounding title for… Read More

Senior Sarah Clements sings—accompanied by sophomore Calendula Cheng at the keyboards—during the dress rehearsal for January’s concert A Humming Under My Feet. Photo by Joe Howell Many women encounter glass ceilings during their careers. For women composers, those ceilings are seemingly laminated and bulletproof. That’s especially true for women who… Read More

Clara Morera, The Preboste Juan (King Juan), 2017, mixed media on canvas, 72 x 48 inches (courtesy of the artist and Dorfsman Fine Arts, Miami) Artists from the United States, Cuba and Haiti envision social change through reinterpretation of a lost work Visionary Aponte: Art and Black Freedom brings together… Read More

Nothing to See Here (2019, Ecco/HarperCollins), the latest novel by Kevin Wilson, BA’00, explores female friendship, along with the question of how to raise spontaneously combustible twins. In its review, Kirkus says, “One of his greatest strengths is the ability to craft an everyday family drama and inject it… Read More

Sophomores Amber Yun and Jared Schmidt, and junior Joe Pehrson of Vanderbilt University Theatre scream as they perform a scene from Catharsis, by sophomore Natalie Martinez-White, during the August Spotlight Showcase for first-year students. Photo by Anne Rayner During their first week at Vanderbilt, first-year students are met with an… Read More

Chin, shown creating in his workshop, is known for his large-scale art installations. Photo courtesy of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Visionary artist Mel Chin, BA’75, was named Sept. 25 among the class of 26 MacArthur Fellows for 2019. Given by the John D. and Catherine T. Read More

The opera The Ghosts of Gatsby, by Joshua McGuire, left, andEvan Mack, was staged in October at the Blair School. Photo by David Pike Many of history’s greatest musical collaborators have pursued a creative approach perhaps best described as “you wash, I’ll dry.” Mozart was more than happy to… Read More

Webb—with his dogs, Daisy (as in Buchanan, from The Great Gatsby) and Zelda (as in Fitzgerald)—at Longshore, the Connecticut estate that inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald. Photo by Jim Swaffield As a boy in Westport, Connecticut, Richard Webb, BA’85, was haunted by the ghosts of artists. His affluent waterfront town, about… Read More

Michael Alec Rose, associate professor of composition, had the premiere of his musical drama, Lolly Willowes, based on the novel by Sylvia Townsend Warner, in April at the MATCH–Midtown Arts and Theater Center Houston. In July he was interviewed about the work and his life as a composer by Nashville… Read More

This tall, earth-tone glazed vase is one of Susan DeMay’s classroom demonstration pieces, 17x8x8 inches, completed in stages throughout a semester for an assignment involving numerous objectives for honing pottery wheelwork techniques. Photo by Bill Luton Clay artist Susan DeMay’s retirement exhibit showcases a three-pronged approach to ceramic art From… Read More

Vanderbilt M.F.A. graduate Matthew Baker has sold eight of his stories to media production companies for film adaptation during the past two years. Photo by Logan Werlinger Matthew Baker, MFA’12, never expected to see his work inspire a Hollywood bidding war. When an agent contacted him in 2017 about pitching… Read More

Anna Fisher, a certified nuclear medicine technologist, scans an ancient stamp using the PET/CT scanner. Photo courtesy Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery When the Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science installed a new state-of-the-art PET/CT scanner in early 2018, the team probably never imagined it would be used for an art… Read More

The Blair Big Band, Photo by Susan Urmy The Blair Big Band is the undergraduate collegiate winner in the category Large Jazz Ensemble in DownBeat magazine’s 42nd annual Student Music Awards, announced April 23. This is the Blair School of Music’s first award from DownBeat, which is widely considered the… Read More

Blair’s Deanna Walker, left, welcomes to her songwriting class Claude Kelly, middle, and Chuck Harmony of the duo Louis York. Photo by Steve Green Deanna Walker was initiated into the world of hit Nashville songwriting in the usual way. She suffered a broken heart. In the 1990s,… Read More

Melissa Scrivner Love. Photo by Becca Murray Like many children who grew up in the 1980s, Melissa Scrivner Love, BA’02, was raised on James Bond films. That cinematic introduction to the KGB led her to double major in Russian and theater, and to consider two possible career paths: working… Read More

Detail of Middle Ground by Sophie Drouin and Rachel Sager Mosaic artists convene in Nashville, bringing two exhibits to Vanderbilt Mosaics were originally invented about 4,000 years ago to create durable and inexpensive flooring, but they quickly became more art than craft. A highly refined technique developed during… Read More

Adrianne Mathiowetz Photography Nafissa Thompson-Spires, MA’05, PhD’09, was announced as one of 10 Whiting Award winners March 20 at a ceremony at the New York Historical Society. Thompson-Spires’ short story collection Heads of the Colored People (2018, Atria/37 INK) has been honored with a PEN Open Book Award,… Read More

“Untitled” by Alicia Henry, mixed media, 2 feet by 3 feet Paper dolls have long been used to emphasize cultural norms regarding femininity and beauty. As often happens, childhood play subtly reinforces society’s notions of the “ideal.” Once these playthings are cast off and one enters adulthood, these romanticized… Read More

Junior Nicholas Heilborn conducts his commissioned piece with chatterbird musicians. Photo by Susan Urmy The composer Michael Slayton can’t remember the first time an ensemble performed one of his pieces. That’s perhaps not surprising, since Slayton’s works, especially his chamber music, are now frequently commissioned and performed… Read More

Photo by Anne Rayner Douglas Shadle, assistant professor of musicology, was presented with the American Musicological Society’s inaugural H. Robert Cohen/RIPM Award at this year’s annual meeting in San Antonio for his book Orchestrating the Nation: The Nineteenth-Century American Symphonic Enterprise (2015, Oxford University Press). The award honors… Read More