The Mind’s Eye

Rana DiOrio, JD’91, wasn’t planning to create a children’s media company when she left her job in 2008. She was working in investment banking at the time, and it was, as she puts it, “not a fun place to be, with the economic recession coming in like a freight train.”… Read More

Lyndsey Goodman, BS’01, is both a captain in the Air Force Reserve and a jazz singer. The cockpit of a half-million-pound aircraft and a nightclub stage certainly seem worlds apart. Yet Lyndsey Goodman, BS’01, is at home in both. During the past decade, Capt. Goodman, an Air Force Reserve pilot… Read More

The Servant of Two Masters, an 18th-century farce by Carlo Goldoni, was presented by VUT in February. Albert Einstein and Pablo Picasso may not seem the most relatable of characters for college-age theatre. Catch the cultural giants on the verge of breakthrough, however, and modern students suddenly find themselves joining… Read More

Amelia Winger-Bearskin, right, performs “Flowers” in Manila, Philippines, for the 2010 Tama Tupada International Action and Media Art Festival. When performance art is bad, it’s really bad, Assistant Professor in Art Amelia Winger-Bearskin says by way of explaining why people seem to hate her chosen art form. Because people know… Read More

The Invisible Line: Three American Families and the Secret Journey from Black to White (2011, Penguin) by Daniel J. Sharfstein, associate professor of law The idea of someone transitioning from black to white, without science or surgery, seems hard to grasp on the surface. Yet, Vanderbilt Law School… Read More

They Came to Nashville (2010, Vanderbilt University Press and Country Music Foundation Press) by Marshall Chapman, BA’71 Singer-songwriter Marshall Chapman interviews 15 Music City legends in her latest book, which she describes as her “love book to Nashville.” Starting with Kris Kristofferson and ending with Willie Nelson, Chapman’s… Read More

George Hamilton IV, a 50-year veteran of the Grand Ole Opry, gazed out across the faces of 200 students who had gathered for Vanderbilt’s History of Country Music course this fall. Now in its third year, the class has proven to be one of the university’s most popular electives, thanks… Read More

Liza Barley, BMus’05, always knew she wanted to do something with her music that would bring people together. She never dreamed that would mean starting an arts center in the East Africa nation of Tanzania. “I went to the arts high school in inner-city Pittsburgh and was greatly influenced by… Read More

The Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery is digitizing its permanent collection to make it accessible to researchers and the general public. Visitors to the gallery website now can link to the collection’s database and browse the collection. Photographs of 25 percent of the collection’s 5,500 objects have been added so… Read More

Lisa Wainwright, BA’82, can recall the precise moment when she embraced art history and education as her life’s work. An English major at Vanderbilt at the time, Wainwright was taking an art history class with Milan Mihal (now professor of fine arts, emeritus). “His class made me realize I… Read More

The little girl in Stacey Irvin’s photograph is laughing. Her head tilts to one side, and her hand is at her chin. Either she wants to ask the photographer something, or she’s just eaten some of the grapes she holds in her other hand. Her eyes invite a conversation, and… Read More

Early press materials for the Oct. 31 concert by the Blair Percussion VORTEX are issued with a tongue-in-cheek warning: “Don’t ENTER THE VORTEX if you’re afraid of the dark.” Members of Blair Percussion VORTEX, shown during their spring concert, must think like actors and move like dancers while playing various percussion… Read More

The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China (2009, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press) by Jay Taylor, BA’52 Chiang Kai-shek set the stage for Taiwan’s evolution of a Chinese model of democratic modernization. Drawing on Chinese sources including Chiang’s diaries, Taylor provides penetrating insight into the dynamics of… Read More

A national literary journal, Nashville Review, was launched by graduate creative writing students at Vanderbilt in April. Nashville Review will be issued three times a year, in the spring, fall and summer. It will operate under a broad definition of literature, including fiction, poetry, comics, songs and films. Interviews with… Read More

Feliks Topolski’s gestural drawing “Neville Chamberlain” was featured in two summer exhibits at the Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery. Drawing employs the most intimate of media: a pencil, a pen, a piece of chalk, a sheet of paper. These materials, so easily accessible and normally used for writing, become in the… Read More

The papers of Julian Goodman, an NBC broadcast pioneer who helped bring to life the network news programs we watch today, have been placed in Special Collections at the Jean and Alexander Heard Library. Goodman began at NBC as a correspondent in 1945 during the formative years of… Read More

Minton Sparks (aka Jill Webb-Hill) Bare-legged in a housedress covered with red and orange flowers, spoken-word artist Minton Sparks walks to the microphone in bone-colored loafers, a purse of the same color hanging from her arm. As a guitar strums in the background, she begins… Read More

The Blakemore Trio   Nearly four years have passed since the Blakemore Trio (violinist Carolyn Huebl, cellist Felix Wang and pianist Amy Dorfman, all three of whom are on the faculty of Vanderbilt’s Blair School of Music) first decided to ask New York composer Susan Botti to write a… Read More

Four years after its creation and only a year and a half after granting degrees to its first class, the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing program at Vanderbilt University has been named a top 20 program in the country by Poets & Writers magazine. Vanderbilt was ranked… Read More

The Jean and Alexander Heard Library is remembering one of America’s most beloved writers with the exhibit “Mark Twain: An American Original,” on display in Special Collections through June 30. The exhibit is free and open to the public. “Twain and Twang,” Nashville’s citywide celebration, marks the 175th anniversary this… Read More