EVENTS
Art & Art History: Visitors to the Art Quad during Admitted Spartan Day will be greeted with an unprecedented assembly of artistic and musical elements brought into harmony under a unique interdepartmental collaboration within the College of Humanities and the Arts. Art students Cynthia Cao, Lauryl Gaumer, Katelyn Leary, Ben O’Hara, Chauncey Rasmussen, and Toni Verdura have partnered up with Music students Daniel Rodier and Zachery Radzikowski to create a body of work, titled Sound & Vision, that turns art making processes into musical compositions, and sculpture into live performance. The event takes place on Saturday, April 11 from 11 am at 2 pm. Don’t miss this one-time-only performance!
English & Comparative Literature: Reed Magazine, the West’s oldest literary journal, is pleased to announce its forthcoming launch party at Book’s Inc. in downtown Mountain View. The launch party will debut our latest edition of nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and art. We are also thrilled to announce our new prize for art, the Leslie Jacoby Honor, based on a generous donation from faculty member and Reed art editor Leslie Jacoby. Sharpen your pencils because on June 1 we begin accepting submissions for Volume 69. Submit online for your chance to win nearly $4000 in prizes.
Philosophy: John Perry, Ph.D. and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University, spoke to an overflow audience about the ways philosophers have sought to articulate how we understand personal identity, or the self, in his presentation “Finding the Self.” He generously offered free copies of his book, A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality, to students present.
Television, Radio, Film, and Theatre: San José State’s Department of Television, Radio, Film and Theatre will continue its spring season with Zoot Suit, playing April 23-April 25 and April 28-May 2 at 7:00pm. The play was written by famous playwright and director Luis Valdez, a 1963 alumnus of the university, and will be directed by his son Kinan Valdez. All performances will be held at 7 pm in the University Theatre, 220 E. San Fernando, San José, CA. Tickets are $10-$20, and are available online or at the door.
STUDENTS
Art & Art History: Pictorial Bachelor of Fine Arts student Roger Ourthiague was recently named the San Francisco Recology Student Artist-in-Residence for summer 2015. Recology SF is a unique art and education program that encourages people to conserve natural resources and promote new ways of thinking about art and the environment. Roger and two other Bay Area artists are afforded studio spaces as well as access to discarded materials at the Recology Solid Waste Transfer and Recycling Center. At the end of his residency, Roger hopes to show his summer art works at Recology’s exciting Bay Area art exhibition, to be held September 18 and 19.
Art & Art History: Jessica Yee, a graduate student in Art History and Visual Culture, curated “Open Invitation: Discovering Community & Relocating Connectivity,” an exhibition exploring themes of social engagement in the wake of violence in honor of women’s history month at Evergreen Valley College, March 9 to 26. Ms. Yee is President of the SJSU Art History Association, and with Vice President Rebecca Quinn is organizing the 21st annual art history symposium. “Between Two Worlds: Syncretism and Alterity in Art” will be held from 10:00am to 4:00pm on Saturday, April 18 in King Library Room 225/229.
Art & Art History: Mary Okin, a graduate student in Art History and Visual Culture, won the Humanities and Letters Category at the 36th Annual SJSU University Research Forum on April 8, 2015. Ms. Okin’s presentation, “The ‘Maiden at the Press’: Arthur F. Mathews and the Rise of the New Woman,” derives from her thesis in progress on Mathews, a prominent Northern California artist. Ms. Okin will represent SJSU at the CSU Research Competition latter this spring
Humanities: Teacher preparation students spent the day with Santa Clara teachers learning how to integrate the arts into K-8 classrooms using design thinking. In collaboration with the Humanities department and the Santa Clara County Office of Education, Montalvo Arts Center brought DesignEd workshops to participants, empowering them with a design thinking toolkit to cultivate the creativity and critical thinking required to shape the world. Participants repurposed discarded materials to solve real-world problems, explored physics through artwork that hinges on balance, learned about conductivity while creating simple circuits for their own inventions, and explored the relationship between mathematical proportions and musical tones. Creative Arts 177 students attended this day-long annual Arts in Your Classroom conference in the beautiful Montalvo setting.
Music & Dance: On Friday, March 20, the SJSU Jazz Orchestra received a “Command Performance” rating at the Santa Cruz Jazz Festival.
Music & Dance: SJSU Concert Choir and the Choraliers invite you to Power their trip to Carnegie Hall. Your donation today will help support the choir members as they represent the university at Carnegie Hall. Performing at Carnegie Hall, one of the most prestigious concert halls in the world, is considered by many to be the ultimate badge of musical distinction. The 100-voice SJSU choir arrives in New York on April 25 for a performance in Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall, on April 27. Your donation enables these students to achieve their dream. Please open your hearts, open your wallets, and help send SJSU choirs to Carnegie Hall!
Television, Radio, Film, & Theatre: RTVF major Kourosh Ahari’s short film Malaise was accepted to 2015 Cannes International Film Festival, the world’s most prestigious and publicized film festival.
ALUMNI
English & Comparative Literature: English alumnus Daniel Arnold, will be returning to campus on May 4 to read from his new book of short stories, Snowblind: Stories of Alpine Obsession. Snowblind marks Arnold’s third publication from Counterpoint Press and his first foray into fiction after two successful collections of adventure essays themed around mountaineering in California.
FACULTY
Humanities and the Arts professors Scot Guenter of American Studies and Cindy Baer of English each received SJSU Facutly awards.
Art & Art History: Chris Eckert’s obsessive craving to survey the artistic potential of factory automation through the lens of his religiosity using his extensive background as an engineer is evidenced in his Solo Show at the San Francisco Museum of Craft and Design. Whether automated or hand-cranked, the work embodies the macabre, with an exacting energy and aptitude for his dark passion. Eckert insists that technology be a means of expression, not the reason for expression. He claims to collect skills as a hobby—skills that come from a wide variety of life experiences. But in truth, he has a natural ability to brilliantly transcend a complicated medium. An excruciatingly slow and expensive process, Eckert utilizes complicated technology effectively as a medium for personal expression; he mysteriously makes it disappear and with utmost precision, transcends the viewer into another place, another time. The Museum of Craft and Design’s exhibitions and programs are generously supported by the Windgate Charitable Foundation and Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund; all events are organized and curated by the Museum of Craft and Design.
Art & Art History: On March 26, John Loomis joined other architectural historians from all over “las Americas” and curators Barry Bergdoll and Patricio del Real to participate in the Scholar’s Day conference for the “Latin America in Construction: Architecture 1955-1980” exhibit at New York MoMA. Among the other participants were Stan Allen, Carlos Brillembourg, Luis Caranza, Fernando Lara, Jorge Francisco Liernur, Cristina Lopez, Mary McCleod, Paulina Villanueva and Stanilaus von Moos.
Art & Art History: Fowler Museum explores the fanciful art environments of eight self-taught Spanish artists with SJSU’s Singular Spaces exhibit, opening at UCLA. This exhibition, accompanied by an almost 1200-page book by the same name, premiered at the Department of Art and Art History’s Thompson Art Gallery in 2013. The exhibition explores SJSU Professor Jo Farb Hernandez’s extensive study of Spanish environmental artists; she crisscrossed Spain from 2000-2014, traveling tens of thousands of kilometers to meet and interview artists and document their work. The exhibition opening on April 16 will be preceded by Spanish guitar music and light refreshments, and at 7:30pm that evening Professor Hernandez will discuss various aspects of her comprehensive project. The exhibition will continue on display through September 6. The public is welcome to attend.
Art & Art History: Teaching associate Dan Fenstermacher expresses the struggles of OCD in his photography series. He writes, “It is my intention that this project demonstrates how life extends beyond its own subjective limits as it offers a narrative to the daily challenges people with OCD face, and hopefully overcome. My goal for this work is to inspire those who suffer to seek out help with their OCD related problems and find relief through therapy, as well as to combat negative stereotypes associated with OCD.” His artwork will be displayed in Gallery 5 of SJSU’s Art Building, as well as the De Young Museum in April.
English & Comparative Literature: Jenny Walicek, candidate for MFA (Creative Nonfiction), had her feature article, “Missing Pieces,” featured on BBC Travel.
English & Comparative Literature: English professor Jonathan Lovell gave a response to President Obama’s email urging supporters to “keep their chins up” following midterm elections, and the professor’s response has garnered the attention of Diane Ravitch’s 17 million blog viewers. Read Professor Lovell’s article.
English & Comparative Literature: Professor Leslie Jacoby has been selected to participate in the 2015 National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Seminar for College and University Teachers. She will participate in a five-week study program in Belfast, Ireland, Douglas, Isle of Man, and Glasgow, Scotland. As one of sixteen participants, she will be working in collaboration with several leading scholars in the multicultural linguistic and literary world of the Irish Sea province, and she will participate in writing a chapter for the Language and Literature of the Irish Sea Cultural Province. She hopes to acquire knowledge and materials to use in the classroom next fall and beyond.
English & Comparative Literature: In Forget Me Not, Katherine D. Harris assesses the phenomenal rise of the annual and its origins in other English, German, and French literary forms as well as its social influence on women, its redefinition of the feminine, and its effects on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century print culture. Harris adopts an interdisciplinary approach that uses textual and social contexts to explore a forum of subversive femininity, where warfare and the masculine hero were not celebrated. Includes appendices of writings by canonical authors published in the literary annuals; more than 60 images from literary annuals. Published by Ohio University press, due June 2015 (but on sale now) in both print and digital.
English & Comparative Literature: Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Concepts, Models & Experiments, edited by Katherine D. Harris, Jentery Sayers, Matthew Gold, and Rebecca Frost Davis, is an open-access, curated collection of downloadable, reusable, and remixable pedagogical resources for humanities scholars interested in the intersections of digital technologies with teaching and learning. Taken as a whole, this collection will document the richly-textured culture of teaching and learning that responds to new digital learning environments, research tools, and socio-cultural contexts, ultimately defining the heterogeneous nature of digital pedagogy.
English & Comparative Literature: California Open Educational Resources Council, chaired by SJSU’s Dr. Katherine D. Harris (English), just won the award DETCHE Award for outstanding Instructional Technology Website, by extension through COOL4Ed. CA-OER is working on bringing low cost or free etextbooks to students in California Community Colleges, UC, and CSU schools to reduce student textbook cost by $100-200 per student. Find them on Facebook.
English & Comparative Literature: Cathleen Miller and Sally Ashton will be giving a joint reading with other faculty from Bay Area MFA programs in creative writing at the Best of the Bay at the Associated Writing Programs Annual Conference in Minneapolis, April 9 at 6 pm.
Music & Dance: On May 9 and 10, Symphony Silicon Valley will premiere a work for orchestra and choir by composer and SJSU faculty Pablo Furman. The performances, which will include Debussy’s “Nocturnes” and Rachmaninoff’s “The Bells,” will feature the participation of School of Music and Dance instrument faculty and choir. Visit their website and search “concerts.”
Music & Dance: Baritone saxophonist and composer Aaron Lington was selected as a “2015 Silicon Valley Artist Laureate” by the arts organization Silicon Valley Creates. He was recognized in the “Off Stage” category, which celebrates his achievements as a composer and arranger. This is the twenty-fifth year of the Silicon Valley Artist Laureate program and places Lington among 140 of the best artists in Silicon Valley from the last quarter-century. #svlaureate15
Music & Dance: Dr. Gwendolyn Mok has been invited to perform works of Brahms and Ravel at the Cobbe Collection (London), Maison Erard (Amsterdam) and the Frederick’s Collection (Boston) in April and June during her sabbatical term. She has recorded two CDs on two of the School’s historic pianos and is preparing to record a third CD at the end of July on two pianos from the Beethoven Center. Dr. Mok also has been invited to meet with curators and restorers of well known collections of historic keyboards in Vienna, Paris, and London and will be interviewing Frits Janmaat, an expert in the restoration of Erard pianos. Two such pianos exist in the collection of the School of Music. In addition, Dr. Mok will be performing George Crumb’s Voice of the Whale for amplified piano, flute and cello in Davies Symphony Hall on May 24 at 3 p.m. on the chamber music series. On February 22, she was interviewed by Larry Bensky on KPFA, to celebrate Chopin’s birthday, and later that day Dr. Mok appeared in the Chopin Gala held at Old First Church in San José.
Television, Radio, Film, and Theatre: Dr. Kimb Massey, Professor of Radio-Television-Film, has been invited to lecture at the Institute for Advanced Study at Delmenhorst in June 2015. Her lecture will be based upon the research she is doing while on sabbatical spring semester 2015. The title of her talk will be Media and Time Perception.
World Languages & Literatures: William C. Gordon spoke on the SJSU campus on April 18, and September 17, 2013 and November 5, 2014. Gordon is the author of detective novels that have been translated into Spanish, and his books often describe the legal difficulties that Latinos have faced in California. Gordon had a long career as a lawyer before turning to fiction, and in his legal career he also worked to help Latinos. SJSU students of Spanish have responded enthusiastically to his visits, and Gordon has posted photos with them on his Facebook page. For the November 5th visit, Gordon was greeted by Provost Feinstein and met Associate Dean Street over lunch.
