Category: What’s New @ UMW

Sarah Cunnane, writer for the Times Higher Education blog, recently featured UMW Blogs as one of the rare scholarly publishing platforms for a university community that actually cultivates, encourages, and allows for open publishing by anyone in the UMW community. We are proud of this public display of trust, and rather than resulting in a black eye for the institution it has become a mechanism for highlighting the amazing work of faculty and students alike, as well as bringing attention to the great work we do at UMW on a regular basis.

The discussion around trust and academic blogging platforms was ignited by a post by Mark Smithers on “Blogging and tust in Universities”. He highlighted UMW as a rare example of trust in Higher Education:

Now the question is why aren’t universities doing the same thing? To be fair, there are some very good examples of university blogging environments where numerous members of the university run a blog. One of the best known is the University of Mary Washington blogs site but even this runs from its own domain and not from the UMW main site. These sites, though, are the exception rather than the rule.

Fact is, this is just the beginning of UMW’s experiment with openly sharing the work we do with the world. over the coming academic year our main website, http://umw.edu, which is now running on WordPress will feature more department bogs/sites (see here, here, and here for examples), individual sites/blogs, and cross-fertilize content from specific departments and class sites into the umw.edu space. This open, fishbowl approach to teaching and learning on a university’s website brings a new idea of open engagement to a university’s web presence. UMW.edu is not just a brochure—it is an open educational experience and a resource all at once!

Join the UMW Galleries for “Jasper Francis Cropsey: The Hudson River School and a True American Landscape,” presented in conjunction with the traveling exhibition Van Gogh, Lichtenstein, Whistler: Masterpieces of World Art from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

The lecture will be held on Sunday, November 13 at 2 p.m. inside Combs Hall, Room 139. Admission is free. However, pre-registration is required to ensure proper seating.

Jeffrey Allison, Paul Mellon Collection Educator at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, will explore the Hudson River School, which represents the first native school of American Art. Dating from the 1820s, it was a loosely organized group of painters who took as their subject the unique naturalness of the American continent, starting with the Hudson River region in New York, but eventually extending in time and space all the way to California and the 1870s. Jasper Francis Cropsey, a first–generation member of the Hudson River School, died in anonymity but was rediscovered by galleries and collectors in the 1960s and remembered as the American painter of Autumn.

Please call the Galleries at (540) 654-1013 or e-mail Justine Geiger, Visitor Services Coordinator, at jgeiger@umw.edu to reserve your seats.

This program has been organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and, is funded, in part, by the Jean Stafford Camp Memorial Fund.

The UMW Department of Theatre & Dance will continue its 2011-12 season with a production of Jonathan Larson’s “Rent.” Performances will be Nov. 3-5, Nov. 10-12 and Nov. 17-19 at 8 p.m., and Nov. 6, 13 and 20 at 2 p.m. in Klein Theatre, duPont Hall. Tickets are $20 for general admission, $16 for students and senior citizens and $8 for faculty, staff and students with UMW IDs.

“Rent” is the story of Mark and Roger, two struggling artists with dreams of making lives for themselves on the Lower East Side of New York City in the mid-1990s. Relationships are challenged as the AIDS epidemic threatens to tear their close-knit community apart. Mark, Roger and friends grapple with the meanings of life, love and loss, and find hope in friendship as they struggle to make ends meet.

“Rent,” with book, music and lyrics by Jonathan Larson, is based upon Giocomo Puccini’s “La Bohème.” “Rent” first premiered at New York Theatre Workshop in 1994, opened off-Broadway in 1996 and moved to Broadway later that year. In 1996, “Rent” won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the Tony Awards for Best Musical, Best Book of a Musical, Best Original Score and Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Musical. It closed in 2008 after running for 5,124 performances, making it one of the longest-running Broadway musicals in history. The rock musical has seen numerous productions across the United States and abroad and was adapted into a major motion picture in 2005.

“Rent” is directed by Gregg Stull, professor and chair of the Department of Theatre & Dance, with musical direction by Christopher Wingert and choreography by Samantha Packard. Scenic design is by Julie Hodge, associate professor of theatre, and costume design is by Kevin McCluskey, associate professor of theatre. Lighting and sound designs are by guest artists Jason Arnold and Tony Angelini. For more information, call the Klein Theatre Box Office at (540) 654-1111.

The winner of the Great Lives contest has been determined! The FIRST person to correctly identify the faces on the display in Monroe Hall is… Jeremy Thompson.

The 17 persons featured in the display who have been the subjects of biographies and film are:

1.      Kurt Vonnegut (American novelist)

2.      Marie Curie (discoverer of radium)

3.      Madam CJ Walker (cosmetics entrepreneur)

4.      The Wright Brothers (inventors of the airplane)

5.      P. T. Barnum (circus showman)

6.      Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (first President of Turkey)

7.      Clarence Darrow (American attorney)

8.      Jackie Robinson (first black Major League Baseball player of the modern era)

9.      Noah Webster (creator of the first American dictionary)

10.     General Marquis de Lafayette (French-born general of the American Revolution)

11.     Anne Frank (diarist of her experiences as a Jewish girl in hiding)

12.     Mildred Loving and Richard Perry Loving (plaintiffs in landmark case overturning laws forbidding mixed marriages)

13.     Aaron Burr (American Revolutionary War general, later Vice President)

14.     Louisa May Alcott (author of Little Women)

15.     Christopher Columbus (explorer of the New World)

All of the above will be the subjects of presentations in the Great Lives Lecture Series beginning in January 2012. As the winner, Jeremy will have his choice of either dinner for two at the Fredericksburg restaurant of his choice; or, dinner for two with the guest speaker/author of his choice in the spring Great Lives Lecture Series.

Congratulations, Jeremy.

– From Charles J. Shields, associate director of the Great Lives Lecture Series

Free Jazz Concert

Robert Jospé

Robert Jospé, renowned jazz drummer, percussionist, composer and educator leads the Inner Rhythm Quartet. The group presents a vibrant repertoire, fusing the buoyant grooves of salsa, samba, swing, funk, and African rhythms into their distinctive sound.

Jospé will be joined by Jeff Decker on saxaphones, Bob Hallahan on piano, and Randall Pharr on bass.  This free concert/lecture program explains the history and structure of Jazz, Blues and Standard song forms and performs compositions that illustrate how West African rhythms have influenced American music.