Prologue
Recent Books, Winter 2020
Feb. 19, 2020—Qualitative Data Collection Tools: Design, Development, and Applications, (2020, Sage Publishers) by Felice D. Billups, EdD’91 This unique supplementary text will guide students and new researchers to design, develop, pilot and employ qualitative tools in order to collect qualitative data. Templates of interview protocols, focus group moderator guides, content analysis tools, document analysis tools, reflective...
On Becoming a Writer: Robert Funke’s Showtime series is funny, angry and original
Feb. 17, 2020—On Becoming a God in Central Florida is an oddly academic-sounding title for a TV show, especially one as kinetic and funny as the Showtime series starring Kirsten Dunst that premiered in August. But as the series’ co-creator Robert Funke, BA’09, explains, the title reflects the nature of the storytelling. “There’s a little bit of...
Equal Time: Student-run concert series shines spotlight on underrepresented artists
Feb. 17, 2020—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 aspire to write for the world’s great symphonies. No women composers had their music performed last season by the Chicago Symphony, one of the country’s so-called Big Five orchestras. The same...
Reimagining a Lost Book
Feb. 17, 2020—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 20 contemporary artists working across a range of media to interpret an extraordinary—and now lost—historical artifact: a so-called “Book of Paintings” created by José Antonio Aponte, a 19th-century Afro-Cuban revolutionary...
On Fire
Feb. 17, 2020—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 with one odd element that turns...
Mind’s Eye: Vanderbilt performing arts groups put on a show for first-year students
Nov. 7, 2019—During their first week at Vanderbilt, first-year students are met with an overwhelming number of organizations vying for their attention. However, the Vanderbilt Performing Arts Community grabs the interest of new students the old-fashioned, time-tested way: They put on a show. VPAC has been producing the Spotlight Showcase for several years to demonstrate the breadth...
Accolade: Mel Chin named ‘genius’ artist
Nov. 7, 2019—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. MacArthur Foundation and known colloquially as the “genius” grant, the fellowship honors “extraordinary originality” and comes with a no-strings-attached grant of $625,000, to be distributed over five years. Chin,...
In Tandem: Alumni Evan Mack and Joshua McGuire have discovered the perfect formula for writing great opera
Nov. 7, 2019—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 let his librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, write all the words, while he focused solely on the score. Gilbert and Sullivan, George and Ira Gershwin, and Rodgers and Hammerstein adhered to...
‘Borne Back’: Richard Webb provides evidence for Gatsby’s locale in Connecticut
Nov. 7, 2019—As a boy in Westport, Connecticut, Richard Webb, BA’85, was haunted by the ghosts of artists. His affluent waterfront town, about 50 miles from New York City, had once been a rural haven for Jazz Age creatives; in fact, Webb grew up near a summer cottage where F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald honeymooned for five...
Accolades
Nov. 7, 2019—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 Public Radio. His Seventh String...
Ceramics Capstone
Aug. 20, 2019—Clay artist Susan DeMay’s retirement exhibit showcases a three-pronged approach to ceramic art From the day in 1977 that Susan DeMay, MS’79, arrived at George Peabody College for Teachers to study with artist and professor Michael Taylor in the basement ceramics studio at East Hall, her journey as a ceramic artist has followed three paths....
In the Spotlight: Matthew Baker’s innovative literary work grabs Hollywood’s attention
Aug. 20, 2019—Matthew Baker, MFA’12, never expected to see his work inspire a Hollywood bidding war. When an agent contacted him in 2017 about pitching his story “The Transition” as a film property, he recalls that it “almost seemed like a prank.” At the time, he was working on his second collection of stories, and his ambitions...