Presenters
Ian Berry, Tang
Ruby Sky Stiler: New Patterns
Ian Berry is Dayton Director of The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery and Professor of Liberal Arts at Skidmore College. He has organized over 100 museum exhibitions for the Tang and museums across the United States. Recent curatorial projects include 3-D Doings: The Imagist Object in Chicago Art 1964-1980; Njideka Akunyili Crosby: Predecessors; a two-year performance-based residency and installation with Kamau Amu Patton; and surveys of painters Dona Nelson and Mary Weatherford. During his tenure, the Tang’s encyclopedic collection has expanded greatly with significant additions across the history of photography and contemporary art. Berry is a leader in the field of college and university museums, and is a regular speaker on interdisciplinary, inventive curatorial practice, and teaching in museums. He is well known for his active publication record including monographs on artists Terry Adkins, Nancy Grossman, Corita Kent, Nicholas Krushenick, Tim Rollins and K.O.S., Alma Thomas, and Kara Walker. He is a board member of the Museum Association of New York, has chaired the Visual Arts Panel of the New York State Council on the Arts, and serves on several advisory committees for regional and national arts organizations.
Beau Breslin, Political Science
Founding Edits: Revising the Declaration and Creating a Legacy Problem
Beau Breslin is Professor of Political Science. He has been a member of the Skidmore faculty since 1998 and has written widely on topics ranging from capital punishment to comparative constitutional law. He holds a B.A. from Hobart College and a M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania. His current book project is called America’s Generational Constitutions and will be published by Stanford University Press.
Marc Conner, President, and English
"I am an invisible man": Knowing and Unknowing the Self in the Writing of Ralph Ellison
Marc Conner joined Skidmore College as its eighth president in July of 2020 following over 24 years at Washington and Lee University in Virginia. From 2016 to 2020, Conner was the longest-serving provost and chief academic officer in Washington and Lee’s history. Conner led the university in reaffirmation of its accreditation, co-chaired its strategic planning process, oversaw the revitalization of its law school, co-founded and served as the director of its African American studies program. He also established Washington and Lee’s Office of Community-Based Learning and its Center for Academic Resources and Pedagogical Excellence, created interdisciplinary programs in data science and law, and steered the university's faculty recruitment, hiring and retention diversity initiatives. Conner also served as the university’s associate provost, chaired the English department, and held the Ballengee Chair of English.
At Skidmore, Conner immediately launched the Racial Justice Initiative, is overseeing the completion of the Center for Integrated Sciences, and continues to steer the College community through the challenges of a global pandemic.
He has published extensively on modern American, African American and Irish literature, and has also produced three lecture series for The Great Courses on Shakespeare and on Irish Literature.
Conner attended the University of Washington, where he earned a B.A. in philosophy and a B.A. in English literature in 1989. He earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. in English literature in 1994 from Princeton University.
Dan Curley, Classics
RE-FLEX: Pictures at an Exhibition (Scroll to Digital Tour)
Dan Curley is Associate Professor of Classics at Skidmore. His teaching and research interests include Latin poetry, ancient dramaturgy, classical mythology, the city of Rome, and the ancient world on screen. He has written articles and essays on classical motifs in modern media, and he is the Vice President of Antiquity in Media Studies (AIMS), an interdisciplinary organization of teacher-scholars dedicated to the discipline of classical reception. Curley is the author of Tragedy in Ovid: Theater, Metatheater, and the Transformation of a Genre (Cambridge University Press, 2013). His current project is Screening Classical Myth, a critical guide for teaching mythology in screen media (under contract with Wiley-Blackwell). He has also written a book of poems, Conditional Future Perfect (Wolfson Press, 2019). FLEX is his first exhibition with the Tang Museum.
Jennifer Delton, History
The Return of War, Plague, and Unreason
Jennifer Delton is Professor of History at Skidmore College. Her work focuses on U.S. liberalism, civil rights, and business in the twentieth century and she is the author of four books, including most recently The Industrialists: How the National Association of Manufacturers Shaped American Capitalism (Princeton University Press, 2020).
Sarah DiPasquale, Dance
Mistakes: Mining the Gold – Owning the Process
Sarah DiPasquale is an Associate Professor and Chair of Dance at Skidmore College.
She earned her Doctorate in Physical Therapy from Sage Graduate School and a B.S.
in Health and Exercise Science from Syracuse University. As a dancer, she trained
at The Center for Ballet and Dance Arts (Syracuse, NY), the Boston Conservatory, and
danced professionally with the Ellen Sinopoli Dance Company.
Sarah’s performance career ended early due to injury which continues to inform the
direction of her research and teaching. Her scholarship focuses on the effects of
dance training on individuals with disabilities and at-risk youth alongside the investigation
of injury prevention and management in collegiate dancers. Sarah was named Skidmore’s
2019 Periclean Faculty Leader for her work bringing civic engagement into the academic
classroom. In 2019 she also served as a New York State Education Department reviewer
for the new Content Specialty Exam in Dance. Sarah’s work has been published in the
Journal of Dance Education, Journal of Dance Medicine and Science (forthcoming), Performance Enhancement & Health, Arts & Health, Medical Problems of the Performing
Artist, Sports, and The International Journal of Exercise Science.
Philip A. Glotzbach, President Emeritus
Truth and Friendship: Reflections on a Paradox of Academic Community
Philip A. Glotzbach became the seventh President of Skidmore College on July 1, 2003. A philosopher, academic administrator and spokesperson on issues of higher education, he joined the College following eleven years at the University of Redlands in southern California.
Sandra H. Goff, Economics
The Mis(Givings) and Mis(Takes) of the Sucker
Sandra Goff is Associate Professor in the Economics Department. Her research employs agent-based computational models and experimental methods in the lab and field to explore prosocial economic behavior. Her recent work has focused on environmental philanthropy, sucker aversion and responsibility aversion in charitable giving, the effects of guilt on ethical consumption, and the effects of economics education on attitudes towards market systems, negative externalities, and government intervention.
Deb Hall is Associate Professor and the Robert Davidson Chair in Art at Skidmore College. Inspired by nature and digital communication, her images reflect our highly caffeinated, constantly moving, technological culture and its impact on our perception and environment. Her work has been exhibited widely in national juried exhibitions, galleries, and museums. She is the recipient of a NYSCA Grant and the Fellowship at The Center for Photography in Woodstock, New York. Her work is also included in the permanent collection of the Portland Art Museum, Portland, Oregon; The Adirondack Trust Corporate Collection in Saratoga Springs, New York; and The Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art in New Paltz; and in many private collections throughout the United States.
Linda Hall, English
Why I Teach Undergrads to Ghostwrite
Linda Hall is Associate Professor of English at Skidmore. She teaches nonfiction writing, specializing in the personal essay and cultural criticism. Her work has appeared in publications including Southwest Review, New York, The Guardian, The American Prospect, The Hudson Review, The Globe and Mail, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, and Salmagundi. A recipient of the McGinnis-Ritchie Award for nonfiction and a finalist for the Bechtel Prize, she has had four “Notable Essays of the Year” in The Best American Essays. In 2012, she was featured in The Best 300 Professors (Princeton Review/Random House). Skidmore’s Kress Family Creative Pedagogy Grant, which she received in 2014, inspired the work she discusses in her symposium presentation.
Lisa Jackson-Schebetta, Theater
Peacemaking and/as Geological Time: Mistakes, Hippos and Dark Ecology
Lisa Jackson-Schebetta is Associate Professor and Chair of Theater at Skidmore College. Her research and teaching focus on theatre and performance history in the hemispheric Americas, dramaturgy, and directing. Her first monograph, Traveler, there is no road: Theatre, the Spanish Civil War, and the Decolonial Imagination in the Americas, was published with University of Iowa Press in 2017. Her second book examines performance and hemispheric peace-building U.S. Latinx theater. She is the editor of Theatre History Studies, the peer-reviewed journal of the Mid-America Theatre Conference, and immediate past-president of the American Theatre and Drama Society. Her work has been published in Theatre Journal, Modern Drama, Journal of American Drama and Theatre, and Theatre History Studies, among others.
Patrice Malatestinic, Music
Mistakes: Mining the Gold – Owning the Process
Patrice Malatestinic, French Horn Instructor and Brass Ensembles Coach at Skidmore College, is a freelance French Hornist in New York’s capital region, a member of the Glens Falls and Schenectady Symphonies, and Hubbard Hall Opera Theater Orchestra. Ms. Malatestinic is a founding member of fünf woodwind quintet; she sings with the Choir of Historic St. Peter’s Protestant Episcopal Church. She directs the St. Peter’s Horn Choir, and has been a member of North Winds, On Cor, and Saratoga Brass. Active in the International Horn Society, she hosted the 2008 regional Northeast Horn Workshop at Skidmore College. Her Masters degree in Performance and Pedagogy culminates from graduate work at Northern Illinois University, where she studied with Virginia Culpepper, Nordwestdeutsche Musikakademie Detmold, Die Hochschule für Musik ‘Mozarteum’ Salzburg (with Michael Hoeltzel), and work at the College of St. Rose. She serves as adjunct faculty at The College of St. Rose, and she maintains an active private teaching studio in Albany, NY and at her home in Saratoga Springs.
Lary Opitz, Theater
Mistakes: Mining the Gold – Owning the Process
Lary Opitz has been director, playwright, designer, producer, stage manager, and actor on Broadway, Off-Broadway, regional, stock, touring, and academic productions. As resident designer for the José Limón Dance Company, he toured 30 countries and throughout the U.S., with many New York City and world premieres. Professor in the Skidmore College Department of Theater, he designed scenery, lighting, and costumes for well over 100 productions in the program. Mr. Opitz has also served as a consultant on many new theaters. In addition to his other directing credits, he has written and directed many of his own adaptations. Opitz has returned to acting on stage and in film since 2000, most recently playing the lead in King Lear. He developed and served as director of BADA’s Shakespeare Programme in London. A founding member of Saratoga Shakespeare, he served for years as Producing Artistic Director of this professional theater. He is a proud member of Actors’ Equity, United Scenic Artists LU#829 IATSE, Dramatists Guild, and the Stage Director and Choreographer Society.
Michael Orr, Dean of the Faculty / Vice President for Academic Affairs, and Art History
Michael Orr joined the College in 2018, having previously served as the Krebs Provost
and Dean of the Faculty at Lake Forest College. Before joining Lake Forest College,
he served as a faculty member at Lawrence University for more than 20 years. A scholar
of late medieval English illuminated manuscripts, he is co-author of three volumes
in the Harvey Miller series An Index of Images in English Manuscripts from the Time of Chaucer to Henry VIII,
c. 1380-c.1509 and has published a range of articles and book chapters on the production and decoration
of illuminated books in late medieval England.
Pushkala Prasad, Management & Business and International Affairs
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Contesting ‘Truths’ about Class, Markets, and Racialized
Capitalism
Pushkala Prasad is the Arthur Zankel Chair Professor of Management and Liberal Arts at Skidmore College where she teaches in the Management and Business Department and the International Affairs Program. Before coming to Skidmore, she was on the faculty at Clarkson University, the University of Calgary, and Lund University in Sweden where she held the E-on Chair Professorship in Corporate Social Responsibility. Professor Prasad has an undergraduate degree in history from the University of Madras, an MBA from Xavier Institute in Jamshedpur, India, and a Ph.D. in Management from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She is a prolific scholar whose research has looked at resistance to technological change, tensions around workplace diversity, corporate legitimacy, and the changing contours of global capitalism. Her work has been published in such pinnacle journals as the Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, and the Journal of Management Studies. She is the author of Crafting Qualitative Research (Routledge), which went into its second edition in 2016 and was translated into Japanese. She is a co-editor of Managing the Organizational Melting Pot (Sage Publications) and the Routledge Companion to Critical Management Studies. Dr. Prasad’s research has been consistently funded by such agencies as the Alberta Energy Corporation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Swedish Quality of Worklife Foundation, and the Jan Wallander Foundation of the Bank of Commerce of Sweden. At Skidmore, Pushkala Prasad teaches International Environments of Business, Diversity and Discrimination in the American Workplace, and Faces and Phases of Global Capitalism. She is currently working on a book on racialized global capitalism.
Dennis Schebetta, Theater
Try again. Fail again. Fail better: Mistakes as Ways of Making and Knowing in Rehearsal
Dennis Schebetta, Assistant Professor in Theater at Skidmore, is an actor, director, and writer in film and theater. He enjoys collaborating with playwrights on new works and has directed off-off Broadway world premieres and regionally, including his own plays. As a film director, his short My Date with Adam, which he produced, wrote, and directed, won “Best Comedy” in the High Desert International Film Festival and was an official selection of New Filmmakers LA, New Filmmakers NYC, Boston Sci-Fi Festival, and the London Sci-Fi Film Festival. As an actor, he was recently seen in the world premiere of Agatha Christie’s The Stranger at iTheatre in Saratoga, as Lord Goring in Northeast Theatre Ensemble’s site specific immersive An Ideal Husband, and as Stephano in Saratoga Shakespeare Company’s The Tempest. Dennis contributed the chapter “Money in Your Pocket: Meisner, Objectives and The First Six Lines” to the book Objectives, Obstacles and Tactics in Practice: Perspectives on Activating the Actor, edited by Valerie Clayman Pye and Hilary Bucs, published by Routledge.
Jeff Segrave, Health and Human Physiological Sciences
Mistakes: Mining the Gold – Owning the Process
Jeff Segrave is Chair of the Music Department. His main area of scholarly interest lies in the socio-cultural analysis of sport; hence, he embraces an interdisciplinary approach that seeks to study sport at the intersections of history, sociology, philosophy, and literature. He has edited three anthologies, and published 20 book chapters and more than 70 articles on sport in a wide variety of journals including the International Journal of Comic Art, Journal of Olympic History, Olympika: The International Journal of Olympic Studies, Stadion: The International Journal of the History of Sport, and International Review for the Sociology of Sport.
Rachel Seligman
On Their Own Terms
Rachel Seligman is the assistant director for curatorial affairs and Malloy Curator at the Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College. She has a B.A. in art history from Skidmore College and an M.A. in art history from George Washington University. She has worked at the National Museum of American Art, the Courthouse Gallery at the Lake George Arts Project in Lake George, New York and was the director and curator of the Mandeville Gallery and curator of the permanent collection at Union College, in Schenectady, New York, from 1997 to 2011. She has taught art history at Adirondack Community College in Glens Falls, New York, Skidmore College and the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York. She has curated numerous historical and contemporary art exhibitions, including Twelve Years a Slave: The Kidnapping, Enslavement, and Rescue of Solomon Northup (1999), A Monument Of Progress—The 175th Anniversary of the Erie Canal (2000), Dynamic Equilibrium—Art and Science (2009), We the People (2012), Classless Society (2013), Machine Project—The Platinum Collection (Live by Special Request) (2015) and Sixfold Symmetry: Pattern in Art and Science (2016/17), among others. Seligman is the co-author of Solomon Northup: The Complete Story of the Author of Twelve Years a Slave (Praeger, 2013).
Sheldon Solomon, Psychology
Hitler and Twittler: (Un)Truth and Totalitarianism
Sheldon Solomon is Professor of Psychology at Skidmore College. His studies of the effects of the uniquely human awareness of death on behavior have been supported by the National Science Foundation and Ernest Becker Foundation, and were featured in the award-winning documentary film Flight from Death: The Quest for Immortality. He is co-author of In the Wake of 9/11: The Psychology of Terror and The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life. Sheldon is an American Psychological Society Fellow, and a recipient of an American Psychological Association Presidential Citation (2007), a Lifetime Career Award by the International Society for Self and Identity (2009), and the Association of Graduate Liberal Studies Programs Annual Faculty Award (2011).
Greg Spinner, Religious Studies
RE-FLEX: Pictures at an Exhibition (Scroll to Digital Tour)
Gregory Spinner is a Teaching Professor in Religious Studies at Skidmore. Trained in the History of Religions at the University of Chicago, he teaches a wide array of courses; these include comparative studies of myth and of body modification, topics that encouraged him to investigate heroic physiques and the sociology of muscle. Additionally, Spinner collaborated with Dan Curley on travel seminars exploring the history of Rome, in which they considered the reception of classical sculpture, such as how the Belvedere Torso influenced Michelangelo’s paintings in the Sistine Chapel. With FLEX, Spinner’s professional interests extend further, by considering how categories associated with religion, such as “myth” or “ritual,” might apply to secular activities or entertainments. He very much appreciated participating in several Mellon-funded seminars on museum-based pedagogy, and previously helped to curate the exhibitions Graphic Jews and Sixfold Symmetry at the Tang.
Nancy Thebaut, Art History
On Their Own Terms
Nancy Thebaut is Assistant Professor of Art History. Her research considers the interplay of works of art, ritual practices, and theology from 800-1200 CE in the European Middle Ages. Prior to joining Skidmore, Thebaut was a NOMIS fellow at the University of Basel, Switzerland. She also has a strong secondary interest in the art and historiography of twentieth-century artists in the United States who have been variously termed “folk,” “outsider,” and “self-taught.” Recent publications include two articles on abstraction in early medieval art and a study of the landscape drawings of self-taught artists Joseph Yoakum. In 2021, she co-curated the exhibition, “On Their Own Terms” at the Tang Teaching Museum alongside students in her Scribner Seminar, “Outsiders? Folk & Self-Taught Artists in the United States.”