Emily Hoffman documents the Wii action at Eliza Bryant Village.
Photos by Susan Griffith.

Ludel Dennis is one heck of a bowler.

Not one bowler in their red Eliza Bryant Village Wii Bowlers shirts has yet to match her perfect 300 score, but they keep trying on Thursday afternoons.

And Jim Sheeler’s multimedia journalism students are there to catch the action with their Flip video cameras, as they sit in on practice in the television room at the retirement village on Wade Park.

Sheeler’s students— Molly Drake, Emily Hoffman and Jonathan Monreal—have spent class time capturing the life stories and activities of these residents who live in Cleveland’s Hough neighborhood. They plan to create a Web-based repository of these stories, audiotapes and images.

“The residents are so excited to have these students interview them,” said Larie R. Goggins, Eliza Bryant’s director of housing.  She helped Sheeler’s students connect with the residents.

Jonathan Monreal films a bowling practice.

The idea for the Department of English journalism course grew out of Sheeler’s reporting for the Rocky Mountain News. There, he wrote narrative obituaries about what made each individual unique—in what, for many, would be the last chance to have their stories told.

Sheeler, who now holds the Shirley Wormser Professorship of Journalism and Media Writing, said visiting the home takes him back to his reporting days.

“This class has turned into more of an internship for the students,” he said, adding that he likes being able to monitor, coach and teach interview techniques as they take place.

Just how important the students’ work is was a lesson learned.

The levity of the bowling overshadows a sense of loss for Sheeler’s students. Early in the semester, they encountered Andrew Bailey, 78. The resident, who appeared healthy, suddenly died in the middle of their project. His legacy is a story of a loving husband who cared deeply for his frail wife, Ethel.

Molly Drake gets to know more
about the residents.

On foot, Mr. Bailey made more than a dozen trips daily from his apartment to visit her at the adjacent nursing home facility and comfort her by holding her hand and helping with physical therapy exercises.

On Thursday afternoons earlier this semester, Mr. Bailey sat down and talked about his life with Drake and Hoffman, until the day he suddenly died in late February. 

“If we had not been there for the month and a half before his death, that story would have been lost,” Sheeler said.

Through their classroom work, the students have preserved his story to share with others who may never have encountered this everyday man and this love story. 

It’s the kind of life story that won Sheeler a Pulitzer Prize for the article, “Final Salute,” about a Marine casualty notification officer and the people he touched while delivering the news that every military family dreads.

“The minute I walked into Eliza Bryant, I knew this home was a place to start the class project. It is teeming with stories and storytellers who have the time to tell them,” he said.

Donald Lopez

Since its publication in 1927, The Tibetan Book of the Dead by W.Y. Evans-Wentz has inspired people from Carl Jung and Timothy Leary to healthcare workers in the hospice movement to adopt Buddhist ways. 

But what separates fact from fiction in the book? Donald Lopez, a Buddhism scholar from the University of Michigan and the Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhism and Tibetan Studies, will talk about the bestseller’s history during the concluding talk of the 2011 Asian Studies Lecture Series at Case Western Reserve University.

The free, public lecture, “Tibet, America and the Book of the Dead” begins at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 26, in Clark Hall 309.

Lopez, who is chair of Michigan Society of Fellows, is the author of The Tibetan Book of the Dead: A Biography. His book follows the evolution of the book’s origin from Evans-Wentz’s travels to the Himalayas where he chanced upon some Buddhist text that was translated into English by a local schoolteacher. Evans-Wentz and the teacher worked together to create a book that has sold more than 1 million copies and taken twists and turns in its interpretation over past decades.

“This lecture will tell the story of how an obscure Tibetan work became the most famous Buddhist text in the western world and an instant classic,” said anthropologist Charlotte Ikels, director of the Asian Studies Program at Case Western Reserve.

For information, call 216.368.0097 or visit case.edu/artsci/asia.

God-like figures that grace Athens’ ancient Greek Parthenon will come to life Friday, April 22, at 1 p.m. as students in Jenifer Neils’ art history seminar reenact roles of 12 Olympian gods depicted on the east side of the Parthenon and visually solve a design puzzle that has challenged art historians for centuries.

Dressed in ethereal white and carrying golden symbols of the gods, students will be videotaped as part of the educational project that involved researching and writing about their individual gods and then acting out their character roles. The reenactment will take place on the south portico of the Cleveland Museum of Art before its Greco-Roman façade.

“This reenactment will prove once and for all how effective the artist’s design was,” Neils said.

Ten students from the seminar and two volunteers with an interest in classics are the acting corps and production crew. They had assistance from professors in theater ( Catherine Albers) and music ( Ross Duffin), as well as the Freedman Center at the campus’ Kelvin Smith Library ( Jared Bendis, also an art history graduate student).

“We are going to act this out in two ways,” Neils said. In the first take, the students will depict the image on the flat surface of the temple honoring Athena. The second take is as the artist would have imagined the scene live, with the gods sitting in a semicircle, without turning their backs on the procession, Neils said.

The Parthenon has stood for 2,500 years on the Acropolis, or high hill, overlooking the city of Athens; it suffered damage during a 1687 explosion. The frieze, which runs 524 feet long and 3 feet tall, is a world monument that has ignited the international “Elgin Marble” debate over ownership of art, as pieces of the frieze are now scattered throughout Europe.

The Parthenon continues to be a tourist destination and fascinates visitors with its portrayal of the Panathenaia festival to honor the city’s namesake Athena. The festival is depicted in dynamic figures of 378 people and 245 horses, cattle and sheep in a procession that starts on the west side and continues along the north and south sides toward the centerpiece of the seated Olympian gods.

Neils, the Ruth Coulter Heede Professor of Art History and Classics, reunited the pieces pictorially in her 2001 book, The Parthenon Frieze, and solved the puzzle that other art historians had said was a design flaw in the Parthenon’s construction.

The flaw, others have said, is that the gods face the procession arriving from both sides of the Parthenon but have their backs turned to the ongoing peplos ceremony in the center honoring Zeus and his daughter Athena.

The students plan to prove their professor’s hypothesis that the Parthenon artist’s original intent was to have the gods seated in a semi-circle before the five figures who are presenting the festival robe (peplos) to Athena.  

Circular seating correlates with ancient Greece theater and political settings, Neils said. 

Prior to publishing her book, Neils scanned Homer to see if there was a reference to this semi-circular seating plan of the gods but did not find any. Shortly after publication, she found support in a statement made by the ancient Greek poet Pindar who wrote about “the fine seats in a circle where the kings of the Sky and of Earth took their place.”

Neils will give a talk about the reenactment experience during a Friends of Art History event on Sunday, May 1, at 4 p.m. in 206 Clark Hall.

The Reenactment Cast:
Seminar Students

• Roshie Ahmadian-Tehrani, Artemis, props and costume manager
• Kristen Herdman, Demeter, graphic designer
• Sabrina Herman, Hermes, webmaster
• Austin Howell, Aphrodite, photography
• Marshall Hughes, Hephaistus, budget manager
• Rachel Hunt, Dionysus, editor and recorder
• Sarah Lin, Ares, music supervisor
• Jacqueline Santiago, Athena, photographer
• Timothy Twombley, Appollo, director
• Ryan Carr, Poseidon, publicity

Volunteers

• Rachel Gardner, Hera
• Zachary Kloss, Zeus

Cynthia M. Beall

Late last week, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation awarded 180 fellowships to some of the top minds in the United States and Canada—including Case Western Reserve University’s own Cynthia M. Beall, Distinguished University Professor and S. Idell Pyle Professor of Anthropology. Nearly 3,000 scholars, scientists and artists applied for the Guggenheim Fellowships.

When looking for funding, Beall specifically targeted the Guggenheim Fellowship because of its broad base. “I was very interested in looking for funding sources that were open to a wide range of fields and that in my particular case didn’t require the collection of new data,” she explained. This year’s fellows range in age from 27 to 84 and cover 61 different disciplines, from writing a biography of author Ken Kesey to studying the roles of animals in American culture, economics and politics.

Beall, who holds secondary appointments in the Departments of Anatomy and Global Health & Diseases, applied for the fellowship last fall and learned of the announcement April 7 via email. “I found out in an odd way,” she said. “An email came and it said something very general, such as, ‘The Guggenheim Foundation Selection Board has selected its fellows for 2011,’ and then it gave a website. And so I went to the website and found out for myself.”

So while details remain unclear, Beall is certain of her plans for this coming year: Having studied the effect of high altitude on individuals’ development for about 40 years and after recently being featured on BBC for her research with Nepalese sherpas, Beall will continue her research on recent human evolution at high altitudes. She will conduct the research during her sabbatical, which begins this fall.

During her fellowship, she will travel back and forth from Case Western Reserve to the University of Chicago Department of Human Genetics, where she will work with a population geneticist on data sets that combine genomics and genetics with Beall’s biology work. Beall will return to teaching in the fall of 2012.

For more information on the Guggenheim Fellowship, click here.

Simon Critchley. Photo
courtesy of The New School
for Social Research.

Simon Critchley, a prominent international philosopher and the editor of the New York Times' philosophy column, will speak Tuesday, April 12, at Case Western Reserve University to discuss why conscience is central to understanding ethics.  

The author of How to Stop Living and Start Worrying and The Book of Dead Philosophers, a New York Times bestseller, will give the talk, “The Powerless Power of the Call of Conscience,” for the inaugural Beamer-Schneider Lecture in Ethics, co-sponsored by the university’s Department of Philosophy and the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities. The free, public event begins at 5:30 p.m. in Clark Hall 309. A reception precedes the talk at 5 p.m.

According to Case Western Reserve philosopher Jeremy Bendik-Keymer, Critchley presents a portrait of ethical and educational life that eschews apathy and shows how modern life demands room for conscience.

Bendik-Keymer, who is Elmer G. Beamer - Hubert H. Schneider Professor in Ethics, describes Critchley as humorous, passionate and wry. His positions, Bendik-Keymer said, are some of modern-day philosophy’s most innovative, focusing on active citizenship, social responsibility and the inter-human connection.

As chair and professor of the philosophy department at The New School for Social Research, Critchley’s faculty page states he is interested in “everything.” Lately, his interests have focused on ethical and political theory, as well as the relationship of philosophy, poetry and humor.

He has written and edited more than 18 books and has two new works in progress for 2011: The Faith of the Faithless - Experiments in Political Theology and a collection, Impossible Objects, that spans a decade of Critchley’s interviews.

If interested in attending, email Renee Holland in the philosophy department at rma2@case.edu or call 216.368.2810.

Case Western Reserve University’s Department of Classics will honor the ancient Roman poet Publius Vergilius Maro, widely known as Vergil, during Vergil Week, to be held April 17-22 to coincide with the American Academy of Poets’ National Poetry Month.

Vergil’s work, including Eclogues, Aeneid and Georgics, became popular right away, said Timothy Wutrich, visiting assistant professor and organizer of Vergil Week. Vergil’s poetry has influenced writers, poets, musicians and artists from all time periods and nations—from Dante, Ariosto and Marlowe to Pietro da Cortona, Milton and T.S. Elliott.

Wutrich noted that ancient Roman teachers used Vergil as a Latin textbook, and his work has held a place in education during the Middle Ages, Renaissance and Enlightenment periods, and present day as a model of Latin verse style.

 “We have reports of people applauding Vergil in the theater, and graffiti at Pompeii attests to the fact that people remembered favorite, quotable lines, the way we have our favorite parts of poems or songs today,” he said.

This is the third year the campus has held organized activities to celebrate the poet.

Join the celebration:
Sunday, April 17: Vergilian Footrace / Cursus Vergilianus
4 p.m. – Sudeck Track, Northside Athletic Facilities
A 5-kilometer footrace that ranges over the north side of campus.

Monday, April 18: Art Contest and Exhibition
3 – 6 p.m. Art Studio Room 201

•Exhibition of student and faculty art inspired by Vergil and Greco-Roman civilization.
•Contest judged by graduate students in Art Education

Tuesday, April 19: Latin Recitation Contest
4 – 6 p.m. Clark Hall 206
•Latin recitation contest for high school and university students

Wednesday, April 20: Lecture, Staged Reading, and Concert
5:30 – 8 p.m. Cleveland Museum of Art
•5:30 Lecture in the Recital Hall: Timothy Wutrich, “Theatricality in the Cleveland Dido and Aeneas Tapestries”
•6:30 Staged Reading in the Armor Court: Aeneid Book IV: “The Dido Tragedy”
•7:30 Concert in the Armor Court: The Early Music Singers conducted by Debra Nagy

Thursday, April 21: Continuous public reading of the Aeneid in English / Exhibition of Art Inspired by the Aeneid
8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. Crawford Hall, SAGES Café:
•All are invited to read from Vergil’s Aeneid as we read the entire epic
•Exhibition of work entered in the Vergil Week Art Contest

Friday, April 22: Symposium: “Tradition: Vergil in Literature and the Arts”
2 – 4 p.m. Clark Hall 206
• Florin Berindeanu, Case Western Reserve University,“ Ars as eros in Dante and Vergil”
• Ricardo Apostol, Case Western Reserve University, "Epic Interruptions: Vergilian Allusion in Petrarch's Bucolicum Carmen"
• Timothy Wutrich, Case Western Reserve University, “Arms and the Men: Marlowe’s Dido, Queen of Carthage”
• Susan Shimp, Independent Scholar, “Excavating Vergil in Counter-Reformation Rome: Domenico Mazzocchi’s Aeneid Dialoghi (1638)”
• Edith Foster, Ashland University, “Vergilian Themes in Willa Cather’s Shadows on the Rock”

5:30 p.m. Clark 309
• Keynote Address: Jan Ziolkowski, Chair, Department of Classics at Harvard University, “Why Medieval Monks Sang the Aeneid”

The event is supported by Case Western Reserve University’s Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities and the Ohio Humanities Council. For information, contact Wutrich at 216.368.6026 or by email.

Poet and editor Jerome Rothenberg, co-founder of the Deep Image poetry movement of the early 1960s, will read from his works and others during the program, “Toward a Global Poetry: A Reading and Discussion.” The free, public event, sponsored by the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, takes place at 6 p.m. Friday, April 8, in Clark Hall 309. 

Rothenberg and poet Robert Kelly spearheaded the Deep Image movement. The new genre of poetry, inspired by works by Frederico Garcia Lorca, was heroic in nature and style.

Rothenberg, now an emeritus professor of visual arts and literature, will discuss changes in poetry and expand the discussion into the global realm with thoughts about the international nature of modern and postmodern poetry. 

He has assumed a key role in expanding poetic literacy beyond national borders and native tongues through translation projects and editing. He has also brought attention to marginalized poets through his work as an editor.

His accomplishments include more than 70 poetry books and pamphlets and 10 anthologies of poetry. Additionally, he has served as editor and co-editor of several magazines.

He has been honored with grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He also has received several PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Awards and PEN Center USA West Translation Awards.

His visit to campus continues the Baker-Nord Center’s yearlong focus on globalism and the role humanities plays by talking about the development of what he has termed “ethnopoetics,” the point at which poetry intersects with linguistics, anthropology and ethnology.

For information, contact Maggie Kaminiski, administrative director of the Baker-Nord Center, at 216.368.2242 or email Maggie.kaminiski@case.edu. Additional information is available at case.edu/humanities.

George Seremba

Few people live through being shot six times and having a grenade thrown at them. But George Seremba, Ugandan playwright and visiting professor in the Case Western Reserve University Department of English, endured and survived such a horrific event. People can hear about his experience and escape to Kenya during “George Seremba: Theater and the Poetics of Resistance,” a free, public event presented by Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities and co-sponsored by The Cleveland Foundation and Cuyahoga County Public Library. Seremba will read excerpts from his play, Come Good Rain , on April 14 at 5 p.m. in Clark Hall 309.

In Come Good Rain, he retells that experience on the night of Dec. 10, 1980, when he was abducted by Milton Obote’s military soldiers and taken into Namanve forest, shot and left to die.  It was a small boy, searching to see if anyone from his village had fallen victim to the gunshots heard during the night, who found Seremba.

During the April 14 event, he also will read from Napoleon on the Nile, a play about three Sudanese refugees who, on the seventh anniversary of their escape from the Sudan, reenact their experiences of escaping the conflicts in their country.

Seremba will spend the next two years teaching at Case Western Reserve University as part of a Creative Fusion grant from The Cleveland Foundation that was awarded to Cuyahoga Country Public Library and Case Western Reserve University. Through this generous grant, Seremba, who received his PhD from Trinity College, Dublin, will teach African plays, playwriting and methodology classes in the English department, offer public programming through Cuyahoga County Public Library, and write and launch new works on Cleveland stages.

During his two-year residency, Seremba will be the Writer in Residence at Cuyahoga County Public Library and will present poetry and playwriting workshops for adults and children, including readings related to the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards and a writing workshop.

Seremba’s talk is part of the yearlong exploration of the humanities and globalism. For more information about this event and future Baker-Nord programs, visit case.edu/humanities or call 216.368.2242.

Case Western Reserve University’s Eldred Theater continues its 2010-11 drama series with Our Town , the Pulitzer Prize-winning 1938 play by Thornton Wilder. The undergraduate-driven show will run April 8-17.

Our Town tells the story of the inhabitants of Grover’s Corners. It’s a heart-warming tale of an idealized Americana that explores the increasingly elusive meaning of community.

The 24-member undergraduate ensemble is directed by Catherine Albers, professor and director of undergraduate studies for the theater department at CWRU. Lecturer Ben Needham led the scenic and lighting design, Jasen Smith, also a lecturer, designed the costumes, and sound designer Matt Eckstein, an undergraduate student, rounds out the design team. The ensemble comprises Tyler Babcock, Nik Bauer, Stephen Berg, Beau Buccilli, Tom Burke, Aaron Byers, Andrew C. Deike, Eliana Fabiyi, Brian Hayt, Andy Heckman, Mika Little, Andrew Lund, Tana Marquez, Matt Mauer, Kelly McCready, Grace Mitri, Zac Olivos, Kelly Opalko, Kamron Palmer, Kelsey Petersen, Nick Pilla, Rita Sirianni, Erin Wendell and Hillary Wheelock.

“ Our Town is a landmark and evocative play and holds a unique place in our country's rich theatrical heritage, but I am drawn to the play because of the beauty of the language and the timelessness of the relationships. Young or old, male or female, we see our lives in this movement of the people of Grover's Corners,” Albers said.

Performances will be April 8, 9, 14, 15 and 16 at 8 p.m., with Sunday matinees on April 10 and 17 at 2:30 p.m. Eldred Theater is located on the CWRU Quad behind Millis Science Center.

General admission is $10, with discounted prices of $7 for adults over 60 and CWRU personnel, and $5 for students. For ticket reservations or information, call the box office for the department of theater and dance at 216.368.6262.

For more information, contact Keli Schimelpfenig, manager of performing arts marketing and events at 216.368.1160.

Stephen Fleming, on an Engineers without Borders
trip to Cameroon.

Senior Stephen J. Fleming has been awarded a Churchill Scholarship, enabling him to spend a year engaged in research at Churchill College, Cambridge University.

The Winston Churchill Foundation of the United States chose Fleming, from Crescent Springs, Ky., as one of 14 students from 103 U.S. colleges and universities to receive the prestigious scholarship this year.

The foundation was founded in 1959 at the recommendation of Sir Winston Churchill, who wished there would always be American graduate students at the college named in his honor.

“It’s great to have a chance to live and work abroad, meet researchers from other parts of the world and learn how they conduct research,” said the 22-year-old Fleming, who will earn a Master of Philosophy degree.

In a new program in medical physics at Cambridge, he will further his research using biological systems as models for nanotechnology that benefits human health.

At Case Western Reserve, Fleming, who is majoring in physics and biochemistry, has been probing how cells in the human defense systems sort out chemical signals and navigate to infection. Fleming is the only investigator who was chosen for the project as a first-year student.

“He had the math and was serious and dynamic,” said Peter Thomas, professor of mathematics and biology, who leads the project.

Fleming is also currently working with Xuan Gao, a professor of physics, developing sensors so small and sensitive they could monitor how well a new drug binds to target molecules.

In addition to research, Fleming has been a leader in the student chapter of Engineers Without Borders. He has helped boost membership and been involved in designing and building water and treatment facilities in rural villages in the Dominican Republic, Thailand and Cameroon.

A top student, Fleming was a finalist for a Gates Foundation scholarship but withdrew when he learned he’d been chosen for the Churchill Scholarship.

Since 1963, the Churchill Foundation has named 452 Churchill Scholars in the biological and physics sciences, engineering, and mathematics. They include scholars, researchers, and teachers in major universities and laboratories, as well as leading figures in finance and industry.

The scholarship covers nearly $50,000 in tuition and fees and costs for housing and travel.

Beverly Saylor and Mulugeta Alene Araya study their findings
in Ethiopia in 2008. Photo by Liz Russel.

When looking to study the geology of Ethiopia, it might seem a bit backward to leave the country to come to Cleveland. But that’s exactly what Mulugeta Alene Araya did when he arrived on campus in January on a six-month Fulbright Scholarship to learn more about the geology and tectonics of hominid-bearing localities in the Afar region of Ethiopia.

“Becoming a Fulbright scholar and visiting [Case Western Reserve University] means getting access to well-equipped laboratory facilities in the campus and related links and also having access to the latest literature at CWRU and affiliate libraries,” Araya explained. “Moreover, it provides the opportunity to discuss and exchange ideas with project members and other scientists, participate in talks and lectures, closely explore the American culture and interact with the people.”

Araya, who is an associate professor at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia and a visiting researcher at Case Western Reserve, is working with Beverly Saylor, associate professor of geological sciences. Prior to his visit, the two already were—and still are—part of a multi-institutional, interdisciplinary team working on a paleoanthropological research project led by Yohannes Haile-Selassie, the curator of physical anthropology at Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

By studying the geology of the WORMIL Paleoanthropology Research Project area of the Afar region—part of the East African Rift System where the African tectonic plate is rupturing—and the thousands of 3.4- to 4-million-year-old animal fossils found there, Saylor and Araya’s team are trying to reconstruct the landscape and environment in which the animals lived. The Afar area “was quite active—subject to huge, explosive volcanic eruptions and repeated basalt flows. Thus, understanding the volcanic evolution of the area is very important,” Saylor explained.

Their research of the Afar area, Araya said, could contribute to “unraveling Earth’s geodynamic behavior as well as the origin and evolution of humans.”

It’s a lot of work to do before he leaves in June, especially considering the vast cultural opportunities he has while in the U.S. So far, he’s visited cities from coast to coast and has hit up numerous institutions in Cleveland, including Great Lakes Science Center and Dittrick Museum of Medical History. Additionally, he will give talks at Kent State University (Ashtabula campus) and Carleton College in Northfield, Minn.

After the Fulbright Scholarship ends in June, Araya intends to return to Ethiopia to continue teaching, research and publish his findings. Additionally, Saylor noted, they have submitted a proposal to continue the project. “If funded, there is money budgeted for Mulugeta to return to the U.S. each year to continue his geochemical research,” Saylor said. With his home in Ethiopia near the area of study, his teamwork with Saylor and others, and the resources available at Case Western Reserve, Araya is prepped with plenty of tools to make a significant breakthrough.

Lynn Powell

Oberlin author Lynn Powell turned to nonfiction for her latest work, Framing Innocence. The book tells the story of Oberlin resident Cynthia Stewart, who fought for her innocence after being accused of taking obscene photographs of her daughter Nora, 8, bathing.

Powell will read from her book, published last fall, during a reading and discussion sponsored by the Department of English and the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities. The free, public event will take place at 4:30 p.m. Thursday, March 31 in the Guilford House parlor.

Stewart’s story made national headlines in 1999 as the mother, who had taken photographs throughout her daughter’s life, became embroiled in a battle with Lorain County’s legal system. The photographs came to the attention of the police when a Discount Drug Mart employee alerted police to four bathtub images among 11 rolls of film submitted for processing.

Powell chronicles how Oberlin’s residents rallied to support Stewart in her struggle by providing a host of free services to help the family through its struggles. She will elaborate on her methods of research and reporting the story.

Stewart’s plight raises issues of privacy, the psychology and dynamics of the family, first amendment rights, the troubling nature of the  “male gaze” and the struggles of an individual vs. the legal bureaucracy, said Mary Grimm, chair of the English department.

For information, email Susan Grimm at sxd290@case.edu.

Theodore Steinberg

Two Case Western Reserve University scholars will work on book projects in 2011 with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Georgia Cowart, professor of music, will work on Watteau’s Utopias of Music and Theater: Visions of a New France; while Theodore Steinberg, Adeline Barry Davee Distinguished Professor of History and professor of law, will finish Environmental History of Greater New York, 1609-2009. 

Steinberg and Cowart are among 99 grant recipients selected from 1,500 applicants. Both were awarded $50,400. The award enables faculty members to be released from teaching to travel to primary resource sites to find materials for their books and to write.

Georgia Cowart

Cowart’s project, based on the paintings of Jean-Antoine Watteau and his use of iconography from operas critiquing the late reign of Louis XIV, crosses disciplines to examine the intersections of art, music, theater and politics. It evolves from the knowledge Cowart gained producing an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City on “Watteau, Music & Theater,” and the principal essay for the catalogue.

Her year will include trips to Paris, London and Edinburgh to conduct research in libraries and museums, along with time for writing in Cleveland.

This is Cowart’s second NEH grant. Support from her first grant in 2001-02 allowed her to complete the book The Triumph of Pleasure: Louis XIV and the Politics of Spectacle, published byThe University of Chicago Press in 2008. 

As for Steinberg, he believes the New York metropolitan area is one of the most thoroughly engineered environments on the planet, and he hopes his latest book will change people’s understanding of how the New York landscape and waterscape came to be what it is today.

Steinberg, an environmental historian and author of numerous books on the interplay of history and the environment, expects to spend a considerable amount of research time in places such as a basement storage room in Babylon, Long Island, and a former landfill in the New Jersey Meadowlands.

His research examines how the small island of Manhattan eventually became the anchor for one of the most significant urban agglomerations ever built. Taking a new perspective on the city’s development, Steinberg will explore “how land and water, especially wetlands, bays and rivers, structured New York’s rise to power.”

Kathryn Karipides

Students in the Case Western Reserve University Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) Dance Program now have the exclusive opportunity for a summer scholarship, thanks to the Cleveland Arts Prize: Kathryn Karipides Scholarship in Modern Dance. This scholarship, which was first awarded in 2006, is now limited to Case Western Reserve students after previously being a national scholarship. As of 2011, the Cleveland Arts Prize: Kathryn Karipides Scholarship in Modern Dance is held by the Cleveland Arts Prize and administered through Case Western Reserve University’s School of Graduate Studies.

The winning graduate student will receive about $2,000 to attend a summer Modern Dance program of their choice. The scholarship is open to incoming students with acceptance into the MFA dance program or students who have completed their first or second year of study with a 3.5 GPA. The winner will be recognized at the annual Graduate Student Awards Ceremony April 26 and also by the Cleveland Arts Prize on its website.

“Graduate students in the arts have few sources of funding,” said Lynn Singer, deputy provost and vice president for academic affairs. “The support for a student to travel and work with other major programs in dance enriches our curriculum here at CWRU as well as enhances the opportunities for our students.”

Karipides is a renowned modern dance choreographer who served on the faculty of Case Western Reserve for 42 years. She retired from the university in 1998 as Samuel B. and Virginia C. Knight Professor Emerita of Humanities and then served as associate provost from 2003 to 2009. She is still active in the university community, serving on the advisory board for the Kelvin Smith Library and the Flora Stone Mather Center for Women Community Advisory Board.

“Karipides is a nationally recognized figure in modern dance, and it is an honor to have a scholarship in her name,” Singer said.

For more information or to apply for the scholarship, click here.

Junior Rachel Hunt shows guests artwork at a Ctownartparty
event last year.

When junior art history/English major Rachel Hunt started her internship search, she went the traditional route, checking out the art museums in the area and waiting to hear back. But when things didn’t pan out, she didn’t agonize over what could have been. Instead, she got innovative and developed her own for-credit internship: She would ramp up her work at Ctownartparty , a local arts promotion and production company that helps innovative Clevelanders get their work showcased. Her first major project of the internship? This Friday, she and partner Ryan Hobson will present Office Art, an exhibition showcasing approximately 20 artists’ works as part of the Tremont Art Walk.

The event will be held from 5 to 11 p.m. in the SCK Design Inc. office space (2221 Professor Ave.), a second-floor office above Lago, and also in a third-floor gallery. But even though its theme is Office Art due to its location, don’t expect bland, stuffy portraits. “I think it’s perfect for people to buy it and hang it up for their office at work, though,” Hunt said.

The artistic range at this exhibition will vary from paintings and photographs to quilt displays and jewelry, she said. Plus, there will be an interactive sculpture that attendees can help construct.

This event will be one of the largest in size Ctownartparty has done so far, and is the first held in conjunction with the Tremont Art Walk, which should help it draw a larger crowd and build awareness around Ctownartparty and its artists.

As part of her internship, Hunt does a majority of the marketing, from designing fliers to writing press releases to doing social media outreach. Additionally, Hunt’s work focuses on expanding Ctownartparty as a nonprofit organization. Previously, Ctownartparty hosted about one event per year since its inception in 2008; already there are four events planned for the first five months of 2011. Her final reflection on the project will showcase items such as media clippings, advertising materials and social media growth.

This internship directly aligns with Hunt’s goal to work in arts management with an administrative role for places like art museums or galleries. Her experience already has proven she can help grow an organization and highlight the talents of others.

“I just feel like there is this overwhelming need for an arts organization in Cleveland that’s going to represent emerging artists who don’t have the money to get their own studio space or pay someone to represent them,” Hunt said. “And because there are so many people surrounding us and giving us this positive energy, we think there’s so much more we can do.”

An example of the hairstyles in
the caryatids. Photography
courtesy of Caryatid Hairstyling
Project at Fairfield University.

Beauty secrets from 400 BC Athens are revealed in a video produced by Fairfield University’s Katherine Schwab. While the camera rolls, a hairdresser twists and braids the locks of six Fairfield University students into the hairstyles sculpted in the caryatids, giant sculpted female figures, found on the Acropolis.

Schwab, associate professor of visual and performing arts, will show the video and talk about her research during a special program, sponsored by the Case Western Reserve University Department of Art History. The event begins at 5 p.m. on Feb. 8 in 100 Mather House, and is free and open to the public.

Schwab curates the Metropolitan Museum of Art Plaster Cast Collection, which includes gifts and long-term renewable loans of casts from the museum and individual donors and is housed at Fairfield.

Schwab comes at the invitation of Jenifer Neils, the Ruth Coulter Heede Professor of Art History and Classics. Like Schwab, Neils researches ancient Greek and Roman art. Neils is the author of the Parthenon Frieze, a book that explores the history of this ancient temple on the Acropolis.   

In the spring, Neils will undertake a similar video project when she recreates the gods featured on the Parthenon frieze. She will have students assume the character of one of the Olympian gods to perform a role for her video.

For more information, call the art history department at 216.368.4118.

Elina Gertsman

The macabre encounter of skeletons mocking the living has haunted Case Western Reserve University art historian Elina Gertsman’s imagination since childhood walks with her grandfather through the St. Nicholas Church in Tallinn, Estonia (now the Art Museum of Estonia). That childhood fascination led to Gertsman’s newly published book, The Dance of Death in the Middle Ages: Image, Text, Performance (Brepols, 2010), a rare and long-awaited volume on the subject. Gertsman is an assistant professor in the art history department, who started at the university in August. At Case Western Reserve University, she teaches courses on medieval art, including Gothic Art, Medieval Art, Women and Medieval Visual Culture and a seminar on Death in Medieval Art.

The Dance of Death is a late medieval genre that, when incarnated as a large-scale public artwork, often combines images and text. The procession of figures often starts with a pope and then alternates with skeletons or corpses by societal hierarchy from the rich to the poor, the powerful to the powerless. It includes both young and old, lay people and clerics.

The Dance may begin, Gertsman said, with a preacher or a long-suffering figure standing on a raised pulpit and speaking directly to the viewer: “Oh, reasonable creature, poor or rich, look into this mirror, young and old” and exhorting him or her to heed death’s approach.

The text accompanying the macabre images creates a dialogue between the living and Death. In the end, Death always triumphs. Although the Dances include religious figures, often very little is mentioned of God.

“These images certainly demonstrate the equalizing force of death,” Gertsman said. “Death mocks men and women, and kills them. The living try to resist but always fail.

“But it is so much more than that. The Dance is also about medieval conceptions of dancing and their intertwinement with death, about the relationship between image and performance, about preaching and anxieties associated with 15th-century cultural, social and religious climates.” It is ultimately, Gertsman said, about the place of the viewer before an experiential image.

While the images may not startle today’s audience that has become accustomed to bloody scenes on the news and in movies, she said on the medieval population such public murals had a different impact.

“Medieval men and women died younger and death was everywhere to be seen, but seeing it encoded in this type of visual imagery that demanded interaction must have been tremendously compelling,” she said.

Much like information becomes viral in today’s information age, this genre spread through Western Europe. The earliest extant Dance of Death text, from ca. 1400, is found in Spain. Some 25 years later, a famous mural that combined text and image appeared in Paris, at the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents.  Prints of that mural may have inspired many other Dances.

Dozens of images still exist, but many others from the 1400s have been destroyed, some painted over and replaced with more fashionable subject matter, said Gertsman.

But for those interested in the macabre art and text of the past, the remaining images can sweep the viewer back in time to see another form of public art.

Julie Exline

The notion of being angry with God goes back to ancient days. Such personal struggles are not new, but Case Western Reserve University faculty member Julie Exline began looking at “anger at God” in a new way. Now, her study is getting national attention from media outlets, including CNN, ABC News and U.S. News and World Report.

“Many people experience anger toward God,” Exline explained. “Even people who deeply love and respect God can become angry. Just as people become upset or angry with others, including loved ones, they can also become angry with God.”

Exline, an associate professor of psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences, has researched anger toward God over the past decade, conducting studies with hundreds of people, including college students, cancer survivors and grief-stricken family members.

She and her colleagues report their results in the article, “Anger Toward God: Social-Cognitive Predictors, Prevalence and Links with Adjustment to Bereavement and Cancer” in the new issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

Anger toward God often coincides with deaths, illnesses, accidents or natural disasters. Yet anger is not limited to traumatic situations. It can also surface when people experience personal disappointments, failures or interpersonal hurts. Some people see God as ultimately responsible for such events, and they become angry when they see God’s intentions as cruel or uncaring. They might think God abandoned, betrayed or mistreated them, Exline said.
  
According to Exline’s findings, Protestants, African-Americans and older people tend to report less anger at God, and people who do not believe in God may still harbor anger. Additionally, anger toward God is most distressing when it is frequent, intense or chronic. 

Overcoming anger at God, she said, may require some of the same steps needed to resolve other anger issues.

“People may benefit from reflecting more closely on the situation and how they see God’s role in it,” Exline suggested. “For example, they may become less angry if they decide that God was not actually responsible for the upsetting event, or if they can see how God has brought some meaning or benefit from a painful situation.”

People who feel angry toward God also need to be reassured they are not alone. Many individuals experience such struggles, she said, suggesting people try to be open and honest with God about their anger, rather than pulling away or trying to cover up their negative feelings.

Readers who would like to participate in an online study of anger toward God can go here.

Marie Lathers

Fifty-four years after the first screen portrayal of a human woman in space—in the 1929 German movie Woman in the Moon—the first female American astronaut, Sally Ride, took a real-life trip into space. For the most part, women were, as Case Western Reserve University Professor Marie Lathers describes, “grounded.” They were limited, especially in the post-World War II United States, to roles “in the home, kitchen or backyard.” 

In her new book, Space Oddities: Women and Outer Space in Popular Film and Culture, 1960-2000 (Continuum), Lathers examines how female space travelers broke through this airy ceiling and went from the silver screen to the International Space Station. The book evolved from Lathers’ longtime interest in feminist issues and her SAGES University Seminar Women in Outer Space.

“This study poses woman in space as a problem, one that the U.S. space program, the media and popular culture wrestled with and worked through in fits and starts throughout most of the 20th century,” writes Lathers, Elizabeth M. and William C. Treuhaft Professor of Humanities and French in the College of Arts and Sciences.

For earthbound women of the 1960s, films and popular television shows like I Dream of Jeannie and Barbarella primed the general public with the idea that men could give up a seat to accommodate a woman on those space journeys, and films such as Alien and the more recent Contact helped assure the public that women could survive and make life-saving decisions in an alien environment, Lathers says. In the spaces of film frames, photographs and stories, she shows “a woman is woven into space.”

Michael Clune

New to campus this semester, the English department’s Michael Clune created national buzz when The Daily Beast, a popular news blog, called his upper-level English seminar, Forms of Life, one of the year’s hottest college courses. 

The assistant professor's Forms of Life seminar explores how writers have stopped time to infuse their subjects with immortality. He also teaches an American literature survey course.

In spring semester, he plans to appeal to other students on campus with a science fiction offering. Another planned course is Literature of the City, which will examine how the city has evolved artificially, through planning by man, or biologically, like living organisms that grow and evolve.

Clune’s ideas for course offerings derive from his personal interests but also are inspired by the variety of disciplines that come into play in a great work of words from anthropology, economics, history and science. “It can take you to many cool places,” he said.

Clune is a 20th century American literature specialist and the author of American Literature and the Free Market, 1945-2000, published by the Cambridge University Press Series in American Literature and Culture. The book explores how literature, music and art after WWII create a new image of the market that exerts a troubling fascination on American society and culture.