The Rape of Mesopotamia has been favorably reviewed in Harper’s Weekly, among other publications.

On November 7, 2009, Dawn Upshaw and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra mesmerized a packed audience at Mandel Hall with a program that included the premiere of In the Land of the Lemon Trees.  This song cycle was composed by Alberto Iglesias, an Academy Award-nominated composer best known for his work with director Pedro Almodovar. Chicago Tribune classical music critic John von Rhein wrote the following in his review of the performance:

[Alberto] Iglesias based his vocal work on English and French poems by John Ashbery, Rene Char and Wallace Stevens.  Rather than clothe their dense verses in astringent modernist harmonies, as one might have expected, Iglesias has opted instead for luminous, diatonic lyricism. Long, shapely vocal lines are set within shimmering orchestral textures shot through with the throbbing riffs of amplified guitar.

Upshaw was the composer’s ally in transforming obscure poetic musings into deeply affecting music. The singer again proved herself a wonder at evoking moods and expressive nuances. Her voice has acquired more varied colors, while her diction and musicianship remain impeccable.

To read John von Rhein’s review in its entirety please click here.

On November 17, 2009 Upshaw returned to Mandel Hall to perform with eighth blackbird and other distinguished guests as they presented the song cycle Ayre by famed composer Osvaldo Golijov.  Golijov’s music reflects his own complex personal experiences, and Ayre is no exception as it focuses on the intermingling of Christian, Arab, and Jewish culture before the expulsion of the Jews in the late 15th-century.  Golijov says, “With a little bend, a melody goes from Jewish to Arab to Christian. How connected these cultures are and how terrible it is when they don’t understand each other. The grief that we are living in the world today has already happened for centuries but somehow harmony was possible between these civilizations.”

To find out more about future events on campus sponsored by the University of Chicago Presents, please click here; to learn about events sponsored by Artspeaks, please click here.

Matthew Crawford, AM’92 PhD’00, was featured on the Colbert Report on June 24, 2009 to promote his recent book

You can also read his article “The Case for Working With Your Hands” (adapted from his book) published in The New York Times Magazine here.

Outside evaluator Kathy Woodward, Director of the Simpson Humanities Center at the University of Washington, writes, “Tiwari proves you don’t have to be in a research job at a university to grow the humanities, nor contribute to and understand of heritage. And you can make work that addresses K-12 as well as articulated film and scholarly communities. Hers is an act of breadth as well as depth.”

To read more about Bulbul Tiwari’s work and the prize please click here.

The University of Chicago trustees recently approved the design for the Reva and David Logan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts.  The state-of-the-art complex is slated to open in Spring 2012 along the Midway Plaisance at 60th and Ingleside.  To read more about the project please click here.

Update:
William Michel, AB’92, MBA’08, has been named executive director of the Logan Center for Creative and Performing Arts, and Theaster Gates, an artist-in-residence and lecturer in visual arts, has been appointed director of arts-program development.  To read more about the Logan Center and architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien’s architectural vision, please click here.

One of the highlights of last year’s program was a talk in March of 2009 by professor of philosophy Candace Volger. In exploring “Ethical Challenges,” Professor Vogler skillfully wove together examples from philosophy, literature, and everyday life. She challenged the audience to examine their daily choices between right and wrong, peppering the lecture with examples from the economic crisis of the last year. You can listen to a recording of Professor Vogler’s talk by clicking here.

This year’s program continues this tradition of broadening the dialogue between academia and the community-at-large. Adrian Johns, professor of history, will start the year off by discussing “The Politics of Media Piracy” on November 4, 2009. He will challenge the audience to think about the history of intellectual piracy from the invention of the printing press to the dawn of the Internet era and how this history influences contemporary debate about access, use, creativity, and commerce.

A talk by Wendy Doniger on “Faking It: Narratives of Circular Jewelry and Resourceful Women” will follow on February 3, 2010; the series will conclude with Josef Stern’s discussion of “The Unbinding of Isaac: Maimonides on Genesis 22 (The Aqedah)” on May 5, 2010.

Engage yourself in the humanities at the University of Chicago by attending Professor Johns’s lecture (and future Humanities Forum events) at the Gleacher Center, located in downtown Chicago at 450 N. Cityfront Plaza Drive. All the lectures are free, but advance registration is recommended. To reserve your spot for the lecture, please call 773-702-8274, and for more information about the Franke Institute please visit franke.uchicago.edu.

This is the second year that a member of the Division of Humanities has won the Richman Award.  Last year’s winner, Juanita Denson retired shortly after receiving the award following over forty years of service to the University.

Congratulations Kathy!

For more information about Kathy’s work and the award please click here.

Martha Feldman, professor and acting chair of the University’s Department of Music, notes the larger significance of the award as it relates to the University of Chicago’s growing influence in the performing arts: “With the imminent opening of the Reva and David Logan Arts Center for Creative and Performing Arts, now is a brilliant time in our institutional history to establish such a relationship. To await a work from Sofia Gubaidulina is to be in a very special position.”

For more information about the award please click here and for more information about Contempo please click here.

The polynomial texture mapping machine in use at the Oriental Institute. Photo Credit: persepolistablets.blogspot.com/

New technological advances are helping fuel the study, collaboration, and discussion of thousands of tablets discovered in Iran in 1933, and on loan to the Oriental Institute since 1936.  The Persepolis Fortification Archive has benefitted from the use of  an advanced electronic imaging machine that takes a set of 32 pictures of each side of the tablet and then knits the images together to create a cohesive image that the viewer can manipulate as needed.  Not only are the images recorded for posterity and further research, they can also be transported electronically to researchers around the world to allow for collaboration, learning, and further study.

Matt Stolper, Director of the Persepolis Fortification Archiver says, “thanks to electronic media, we don’t have to cut the parts of the archive up and distribute the pieces among academic specialties.  We can combine the work of specialists in a way that lets us see the archive as it really was, in its original complexity, as one big thing with many distinct parts.”

To read more about this exciting project please click here.