Faculty-Staff Achievements, Dec. 18, 2013

Award

Evan Mack, visiting assistant professor of music and a 2003 graduate of Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University, is the recipient of one of the newest awards presented by the Vanderbilt Alumni Association Board of Directors — the Young Alumni Professional Achievement Award.

The award honors an alumnus/a age 40 or younger with a significant record of career achievement and a promise for future professional success. This award and the Alumni Volunteer Award are new awards created by the Vanderbilt Alumni Association Board of Directors to celebrate alumni accomplishments.

Mack is an award-winning composer and concert pianist. His first opera, Angel of the Amazon, won the Boston Metro Opera MainStage Award. He has produced five full musicals and, as a highly accomplished concert pianist, has toured all over the United States and in Barcelona and South Africa as a champion of American piano music. His most recent project is a two-year development deal to turn Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Kennedy’s best-selling novel Roscoe into a new American opera (with libretto by Blair Senior Lecturer Joshua McGuire).

Activities

Mary-Elizabeth O’Brien, professor of German, led a conversation about the German cinema Dec. 15 at a Saratoga Film Forum “Town and Gown” program. Her talk keyed into Robert Wiene’s 1912 classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a film about a carnival with some creepy featured attractions that visits a tiny German town. The movie is considered one of the great horror films of the Silent Era and a classic of the German Expressionistic movement.  O’Brien is a scholar of German expressionist and silent cinema.

Pushkala Prasad, Zankel Professor of Management for Liberal Arts Students and professor of business, presented a paper titled "Border Controls: Academic Branding and Exclusionary Mechanisms in Critical Management Studies" Nov. 22 at the Annual Meeting of the National Communications Association in Washington, D.C. 

Publications, Exhibitions

Eunice Ferreira, assistant professor of theater, is the author of “Crioulo Shakespeareano and the Creolizing of King Lear,” in African Theatre: Shakespeare in and out of Africa, November 2013.  The annual publication is edited by leading scholars in African studies: Martin Banham, James Gibbs, and Femi Osofisan. Ferreira analyzes issues of language, cultural, and national identity through the lens of performance in the West African republic of the Cape Verde Islands. Her essay examines an adaptive approach to staging Shakespeare in the former Portuguese colony. Ferreira also made her Skidmore directorial debut this fall with her production of Polaroid Stories by Naomi Iizuka.

Sonia Silva, associate professor of anthropology, is the author of an article titled “Remarks on Similiarity in Ritual Classification: Affliction, Divination and Object Animation,” published in History of Religions, Vol. 53, No. 2, 2013. (An earlier version of this item contained an incorrect title for Silva.)

Robert ParkeHarrison, professor of art, and his wife, Shana, have collaborated on a commission to create a mural for the Worcester Art Museum’s Wall at WAM series. Titled “These Days of Maiuma” (2013), their staged photography involves performance, sculptural props, elaborate backdrops, and digital technology. Read more.

In the News

Jennifer Delton, professor of history, is the author of an opinion essay titled “Film gives taste of false luxury,” a critique of the movie 12 Years a Slave, published Dec. 13 in the Albany Times Union.

Jim Kennelly, professor of international business and management, was interviewed Dec. 4 by Joe Donahue on radio station WAMC’s morning “Roundtable” program. The topic was Kennelly’s recently published co-authored book The Irish Edge. 

Corinne A. Moss-Racusin, assistant professor of psychology, had research on gender bias in the workplace featured as a story on ABC News Dec. 11. View the segment.