Eastman Undergrad Wins Marshall Scholarship

Rachel Kincaid, a 21-year-old trumpet player and composer at the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music, has been awarded a prestigious Marshall Scholarship to pursue two advanced degrees in the United Kingdom.
She will begin a one-year master's degree program in trumpet performance next fall at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, England, and start work on a second master's degree in music composition the following year at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, Scotland.
Kincaid, an applied music major who has written pieces at the request of Eastman faculty and a Swiss music publisher, is among 37 winners of the 2008 Marshall Scholarships from across the United States and the first from the University of Rochester to earn the honor since 1988.
A native of Wooster, Ohio, where she sang in a Lutheran church choir and first picked up a trumpet in the fifth grade, Kincaid plans to use her music to move people to confront social ills, such as poverty, war, and environmental troubles. "I want to use music to expand people's way of thinking, to make them think about something that they wouldn't otherwise," said Kincaid, who cites Krzysztof Penderecki's "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima" among her inspirations. "No one can listen to that piece and know the title and not think about the moral implications of using nuclear technology," she said. "Whether it changes people's opinions or not, it at least makes them think about it."
The Marshall Scholarship program was established in 1953 by the British Parliament as a gesture to the United States for assistance received after World War II under the Marshall Plan. The scholarships award highly-qualified American undergraduates and recent college graduates with two years of fully funded study at any university in the United Kingdom.
Congratulations, Rachel!

Political Science Comes to Eastman

The Humanities Department expanded its disciplinary breadth in 2007 when Dr. Glenn Mackin (PhD 2005, Political Science, U. of Washington) joined the Eastman Faculty. "Eastman students have shown steady interest in Political Science classes, and we are glad to be able now to offer them on our campus," says department chair Timothy Scheie. "Moreover, as a political theorist Professor Mackin also brings a strong philosophical perspective to our course offerings."

Professor Mackin comes to Rochester from Seattle, where he taught for two years at the University of Washington before joining the Eastman faculty. He is currently teaching a course on democratic theory and two sections of the Freshman Writing Seminar on "The Politics of Personhood." This spring he has developed two courses that are new to our curriculum: "Concepts of Power" and "Modernity and Politics."

New Diversity in the Curriculum

A new course, “African-American Art” (AH 281), is broadening diversity in Humanities study at Eastman this fall. “Race is an enormously important issue in American culture, particularly in the wake of Katrina,” says Professor Rachel Remmel, the course’s instructor. “A course on African-American art will complement the study of jazz at our school.” Students in the course explore four main moments in the history of African-American Art: slavery, the nineteenth century, the Harlem Renaissance, and postmodernism.”

Pictured: Louiza Francis Combs, Woven Wool Blanket, Kentucky, c. 1890, 79 1/2" x 61". Collection of Kenneth Combs, Warrensville Heights, Ohio.

For images of post-Katrina New Orleans, visit
http://www.flickr.com/photos/recluse26

Fulbright Grants and the Eastman Experience: a Successful Match

This year four Eastman students are studying and teaching through the U.S. Government Fulbright program. Jay Kacherski, Masters of Music in Guitar Performance (2005) is in Mexico City, researching, studying and performing contemporary Mexican classical guitar music at the Escuela Nacional de Musica (National School of Music). John Koslovsky, Ph.D. candidate in Music Theory (2009) is researching the life and work of musicologist Felix Salzer at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien (pictured). Adam Peithmann, Bachelor of Music candidate in Organ Performance (2007) is studying the organ works of Dietrich Buxtehude on North German Baroque instruments with Professor Harald Vogel at the Hochschule für Kunst in Bremen, Germany. Anton (TJ) Grasch, a bachelor's degree candidate in voice (2007), has received a Fulbright-administered teaching assistantship in Austrian schools.

“I’m thrilled with this year’s success,” says Humanities professor and Fulbright Program Advisor Reinhild Steingröver, “but not at all surprised. Eastman students often fit the profile the Fulbright commission is seeking. Take Adam Peithman, for example. As an undergraduate he studied German language, history, and culture in the Humanities Department at Eastman and on the University of Rochester’s summer program in Berlin. His intellectual curiosity and strong language skills, along with a well-articulated project and the excellence of his playing, permitted him to assemble an exceptionally strong application.”

For more information on the Fulbright Program, visit
http://us.fulbrightonline.org/about.html
For information on Eastman’s Fulbright application process, visit
http://www.esm.rochester.edu/careers/fulbright.php

Adventures in Illegal Art

Negativland isn't just some group of merry pranksters; its art is about tearing apart and reassembling found images to create new ones, in an attempt to make social, political and artistic statements. Hilarious and chilling.
- THE ONION

Pranks, media hoaxes, media literacy, the art of collage, creative activism in a media saturated multi-national world, file sharing, intellectual property issues, evolving notions of art and ownership and law in a digital age, artistic and funny critiques of mass media and culture, so-called “culture jamming” (a term coined by Negativland way back in 1984).... even if you've never heard of Negativland, if you are interested in any of these issues you’re sure to find this presentation worth your time and attention.

Most famous for getting sued for their “U2” single, Negativland have had many years of fun being a thorn in the side of the corporate media and entertainment biz. They’ve released a a number of CDs, do occasional tours, make little movies, and were the subject of San Francisco filmmaker Craig Baldwin’s 1995 feature film “SONIC OUTLAWS”.

In February the Humanities Department will co-sponsor a 90-minute film and storytelling presentation by Mark Hosler, founding member of Negativland, with Q and A to follow. The time and place are to be announced.

No lawyers were harmed in the making of this event!

To hear and see examples of Negativland’s projects, visit http://www.negativland.com

A Damned Good Picture

On November 6, the Humanities Department co-sponsored a special screening of F.W. Murnau's silent feature Faust (1926) at the George Eastman House's Dryden theater. The screening was anything but silent, however. The Willem Breuker Kollektief, a ten-piece jazz ensemble from the Netherlands, provided musical accompaniment on instruments including lute, clarinet, tuba, double bass, saxophone, and piano. Humanities professor Reinhild Steingröver introduced the film to an audience of nearly 500. With Murnau's visionary images, the incomparable Emil Jannings as Mephistopheles, and the witty new score, the audience enjoyed a devilishly good time.

Stay tuned for more film and music collaborations sponsored by the Humanities department.

For a trailer of the film with the Willem Breuker Kollektief accompaniment, visit http://www.xs4all.nl/~wbk/FAUSTtrailer.html

For more on the George Eastman House, visit http://eastmanhouse.org

The Organ as Artifact

What does an organ tell us about the society in which it was designed, crafted, and assembled? We will soon find out. The Humanities department is a co-sponsor of a university-wide project "The Organ in Society: Culture and Technology." The project will coincide with the installation of a precise replica of the rare Casparini organ built in 1776 in Lithuania. The new instrument has been painstakingly reproduced by international experts in Sweden and will be installed in Rochester's Christ Church during the 2007-08 academic year. Faculty and students drawn from the College of Arts and Sciences and the Eastman School of Music will combine forces with authorities from around the world to explore the ways in which the pipe-organ provides insight into the culture of both eighteenth-century Vilnius and twenty-first century Rochester. We will consider the physics and engineering of these instruments, their function in the lives of those who heard them, the music played on them, and their significance for those who built and restored them.

For more on the Eastman Rochester Organ Initiative (EROI), visit http://www.esm.rochester.edu/eroi/

For information on the "Organ in Society: Culture and Technology" humanities project at the University of Rochester, visit
http://www.rochester.edu/College/humanities/projects/?organ