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The College of Arts & Sciences
<p dir="ltr"> <strong>Name and title:</strong></p><p dir="ltr"> Jason Simms, Assistant Professor, Performing & Media Arts</p><p dir="ltr"> <strong>Academic focus:</strong></p><p dir="ltr"> Design in performing and media arts</p><p dir="ltr"> <strong>Current research project:</strong></p><p dir="ltr"> The Hive, a social distancing performance and gathering venue</p><p dir="ltr"> <strong>Previous positions:</strong></p>
<h2> "Plans for Work"</h2><p></p>
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<h3>Julie Locker</h3><h3>Performing & Media Arts</h3><h3>Dayton, OH</h3><p><strong>What is your main Cornell extracurricular activity -- why is it important to you?</strong></p>
<h3>Alex Rehberg</h3><h3>Performing & Media Arts & Government</h3><h3>Boca Raton, FL</h3><p><strong>Why did you choose Cornell?</strong></p>
<h3>Christian Uruburo</h3><h3>Chemistry & Performing & Media Arts</h3><h3>New York City, NY</h3><p><strong>What do you value about your liberal arts education?</strong></p>
<p><span style="line-height: 20.8px;">Following last year’s successful 150 Events series, the </span>Department of Performing and Media Arts (PMA)<span style="line-height: 20.8px;"> will continue its new tradition of student-led theater, film and dance performances in its 2015-16 season.</span></p>
<p>If you happen to watch Nicolas Cage's new movie "The Runner" and stay for the credits, you'll see the name Andrea Fiorentini '16.</p><p>Working on the film's postproduction has been just one of the benefits of Fiorentini's internship the past two summers through the alumni-run Cornell in Hollywood program, which helps Cornell students learn about careers in the entertainment industry, find internships and network with Cornellians.</p>
<p>Cornell Cinema's fall season includes a diverse array of special events and showings for movie fans of all genres.</p><p>Cornell Cinema offers a classic movie going experience in the vintage Willard Straight Theatre and is considered one of the best campus film exhibition programs in the country, showing a wide variety of films every month, including recent hits, cult favorites, classics, world cinema and more. The cinema also hosts visiting filmmakers and live music/film events. </p>
<p>When director Sam Gold ’00 thinks about whether he wants to take on a new project, it’s all about the challenge of creating something meaningful.</p><p>“I want to start with what I believe in and care about, a subject matter that speaks to me or a formal challenge that pushes me as an artist,” he says.</p>
<p>What began as a project for two Cornell students working on an event for Human Rights Month has transformed into a play that will be previewed this weekend in Ithaca before moving to an off-Broadway theatre.</p>
<p>Claire Stack '15 says that while at the Schwartz Center, "I had the opportunity to work with some of the kindest and most talented people I have ever come across."</p>
<p>When <a href="http://bit.ly/1LxnqEo">Samantha Sheppard</a>, assistant professor in the Department of Performing and Media Arts, contemplated the movies she would include in a fall film and speaker series on Black cinema, she had a tough time choosing only five.</p>
<p><span style="line-height: 20.8px;">When Karen Jaime graduated from Cornell in 1997, she never thought she’d be back. But now she’s an assistant professor with a joint appointment in performing and media arts and Latino studies, and her former adviser and mentors are colleagues and friends.</span></p>
<p>Chinese resident artists and visiting lecturers on global performance traditions brought international insights to the Schwartz Center this fall. </p>
<p>When Alex Gruhin '11 and Ariel Reid '09, MMH '10, needed to hire a director for their new entertainment venture, the choice was an obvious one -- their favorite theater professor, Bruce Levitt.</p>
<p>For 50 years, the Society for the Humanities has fostered path-breaking scholarship in the humanities. It has sponsored numerous internal grants, workshops and funding opportunities for Cornell faculty and graduate students in the humanities, as well as hosting over 100 annual lectures, workshops, colloquia and conferences organized by Cornell’s distinguished humanities faculty.</p>
<p>Resurrecting a 17th-century Italian opera whose sole musical source was incompletely notated was a challenge musicologist <a href="http://music.cornell.edu/people/faculty/profile/neal-zaslaw/">Neal Zaslaw</a> and a group of students were happy to accept.</p><p>What started as a spring 2015 seminar project was unveiled March 19-20 as an opera complete with Baroque instruments, Arcadian shepherds, hellish demons and classical statuary in the auditorium of Klarman Hall.</p>
<p> The Department of Performing and Media Arts will welcome Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Paula Vogel to campus April 12-13 for a conversation and concert reading of her most recent play, “Indecent.”</p>
<h2>The President's Council of Cornell Women (PCCW) held a symposium centered on the arts, in Ithaca, March 4 to 6, and offered free events for the public.</h2>
<p>Students worked with scripts from the Phoenix Players Theatre Group, a troupe founded by a group of incarcerated men.</p>
<p>The voices shaping the important conversations of our age, from racial unrest to income inequality and the war on cancer, are now a little more diverse, thanks to a group of Cornell faculty members.</p>
<p>Jim can feel the eyes of his classmates. He stays up nights reading his law books. He knows the information. None of that matters now. What matters is he’s the only black man in a classroom of white eyes and it consumes him. He feels branded.</p><p>He starts to talk. His voice trembles. He stutters. His mind goes blank. He fails, again. He can’t exactly explain why.</p>
<h3>Maya Durham</h3><h3>English & Performing and Media Arts</h3><p><style type="text/css"><!--/*--><![CDATA[/* ><!--*/<!--/*--><![CDATA[/* ><!--*/p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 11.0px Helvetica}span.s1 {font-kerning: none}/*--><!]]]]><![CDATA[>*//*--><!]]>*/</style></p><p>Glenwood, MD</p><p><strong>What accomplishments/activities are you most proud of while at Cornell?</strong></p>