artists standing for group photo

Cornell Council for the Arts supports 40 new projects

The Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA) has awarded grants supporting 40 projects, many involving students and faculty in the College of Arts & Sciences, to be presented or performed during the 2016-17 academic year.

Someone in the China Summer School signing a paper

Summer School in Theory holds first session in Shanghai

Faculty from more than 40 East Asian universities attended the inaugural one-week session of the East China Normal University (ECNU)/Cornell Summer School in Theory (ECSST) in Shanghai.ECSST provides an opportunity for select humanities and arts faculty to interact and explore contemporary international debates in media, literary and visual studies; art and philosophy.

Children in front of colorful wall

CCA 2016 Biennial to focus on empathy

The Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA) 2016 Biennial, “Abject/Object Empathies,” will feature 12 new projects by invited artists, Cornell faculty members and students. Most of the works will be presented on campus between Sept. 15 and Dec. 22, all on the theme of the cultural production of empathy.

Austin Bunn

The page, the screen, the stage

In the short story “How to Win an Unwinnable War,” a seventh-grade boy named Sam enrolls in a summer school class called How to Win a Nuclear War. The story traces Sam’s morbid reflections spurred by the course—“He wonders what the stars will see the day the war begins, the whole planet brightening, then going gray like a dead bulb”—as he simultaneously grapples with the dissolution of his parent’s marriage.

Klarman Hall

Jeffrey Palmer

Jeffrey Palmer is an Associate Professor of Performing and Media Arts, a member of the Kiowa Tribe of Oklahoma, and is an award-winning filmmaker and media artist. He describes his work as a multimedia exploration of Indigenous people's lives in twenty-first century America. He recently completed the feature film,N. Scott Momaday: Words from a Bear, examining the life and mind of the first and only Native American writer to win the Pulitzer Prize for literature. The film premiered at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival and aired nationally on the PBS series, American Masters. In 2020, the film was nominated for an Emmy in support of American Masters' 33rd season, for Outstanding Documentary or Non-Fiction Series. The film also won the 2019 Ted Turner Award for the film that most encourages environmental stewardship. Of Palmer's numerous short films,Isabelle's Garden, was a winner of the Bill and Melinda Gates Short Film Challenge at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. His films screened at venues such as Hot Docs, The Seattle International Film Festival, The Berlinale European Market, and many others around the world. He received numerous awards, grants, and recognition from the Sundance Institute, ITVS, Ford Foundation, Mellon Foundation, and the Firelight Media Documentary Lab. He is a member of the Directors Guild of America, International Documentary Association, Television Academy, and in 2022 completed the short narrative filmGhosts, which is chronicles Native American boarding schools in Oklahoma. He is currently working on the feature narrative script for the filmGhosts.

/jeffrey-palmer
Ezra Cornell statue on the quad

Winners of playwriting contest honored Friday

Winners of the Heermans-McCalmon Playwriting Contest will be showcased Friday during an event at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts.Staged readings of first-place winner Molly Karr’s ‘18 screenplay “Whole Hearted” and Aleksej Aarsaether’s ‘17 play, “The Diary of an American Girl” will be presented at 4:30 p.m. in the Class of ‘56 Dance Theatre. Aarsaether also won an honorable mention in the screenwriting category.

Open book with Arabic writing

Teach-In at Cornell: Combating Islamophobia through education

In response to the recent Executive Order barring U.S. entry to citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries, Cornell’s Department of Near Eastern Studies will hold a teach-in Feb. 17 in the Groos Family Atrium in Klarman Hall from 10 a.m. to noon. The event is free and the public is welcome.

Aoise Stratford

PMA professor honored with playwriting fellowship

Aoise Stratford, a visiting assistant professor in Performing and Media Arts, was named the 2017 Blaine Quarnstrom Guest Playwright at the University of Southern Mississippi in January. Stratford spent five days on the Southern Mississippi campus at the beginning of the year giving public talks, having her work read and teaching a series of intense hands-on playwriting workshops for students across the undergraduate and graduate programs in theatre and English.

Mabel Lawrence

Parent gift supports productions at Performing & Media Arts

Mabel Lawrence '19 grew up in a home filled with musical theater. It wasn't unusual, when she was 8 or 9, to get home from elementary school near Los Angeles to find her parents, film and television composer David Lawrence and lyricist Faye Greenberg, working with original cast members, such as those in the Disney Channel’s hit show, "High School Musical."

Sam Gold

The Experimentalist on Broadway

Arts & Sciences alum director Sam Gold's '00 newest project, a Broadway production of “The Glass Menagerie,” opens on March 9. This New York Times profile explores Gold's stripped-down style and approach to directing.

Female Black student listening to talk

Scholars, artists convene to discuss black girls, women

In politics and activism, popular culture and social media, “black girls and women are hyper-visible,” according to associate professor of Africana studies Oneka LaBennett. They are portrayed “as ‘at risk’ and as cultural trendsetters, yet simultaneously rendered invisible in public policy discourses.”

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