An Evening in Paris
Friends and patrons of the Rebecca and John J. Moores School of Music made this year’s Moores School of Music Society shindig an outstanding event. The 23rd-annual Dinner Concert, An Evening in Paris, raised nearly $320,000 (a record!) for the Moores School of Music Scholarship Fund and special projects at the Moores School.
Students dressed as mimes and other street entertainers greeted the approximately 300 guests arriving at the Moores Opera House for the Feb. 23 event.
President Renu Khator and Suresh Khator were among the evening’s guests.
Decorations included Eiffel Towers as stunning center pieces by Steven Wagner and Paul Hensley. During dinner, Arthur Baird served as auctioneer and helped raise an impressive $25,000 for five, $5,000 scholarships in less than six minutes! After the dinner, catered by Jim Manning and A Catered Affair, guests moved into the Moores Opera House where students and faculty of the Moores School performed various numbers with a French influence.
Special thanks go out to event chairs, Beth Madison, Fran Fawcett Peterson, and Kelly Somoza; auction chairs Julie Erickson and Phyllis Williams; underwriting chair Lynda Transier; invitation chair Jeanne Simms; kick-off party chair Eleanor Connan, publicity chairs Thomas Becker, Ellie Fancisco, and Lynda Transier; catering chair Jim Manning; decoration chairs Steven Wagner, Paul Hensley, and Lynda Transier; and to the more than 130 members of the honorary committee for their tireless and unselfish efforts on behalf of our students and programs.
Hugs all around for the fabulous individuals, foundations, and entities that contributed financially at the various sponsorship levels. We appreciate all you do on behalf of our amazingly talented students and faculty!
Congratulations go out to the evening’s honorees:
- The Bush/Bahr Family:
- Denis and Philip Bahr
- Olga and Gerald Bush
- The Mach Family
- Cora Sue and Harry
- Joella and Steven
- Carmen and Butch
- Misty and Tyson Weihs
- Shea Palamountain Smith and Rob Smith
- The Weber Family
Here’s a slideshow of some of the great supporters of the Moores Society and the Moores School of Music.
Chairs Beth Madison, Kelly Somoza, Fran Fawcett Peterson, and Moores Society President Helen P. Shaffer
Auction Chairs Julie Erickson and Phyllis Williams
Honorees Gerald and Olga Bush, and Denise and Philip Bahr
Honorees Harry and Cora Sue Mach, Carmen and Butch Mach, Joella and Steven Mach
Honorees Rob and Shea Palamountain Smith
Honorees Rick and Betsy Cook Weber
Moores Society President-elect Philamena Baird and Arthur Baird
President Renu Khator and Suresh Khator
Marty Reiner, Susan Antel, CLASS Development Director Judy Reiner, CLASS Dean John Antel
Moores School Director David White and Shirley Rose
Pamela Baker, Tom Becker and Kelly Somoza
Gene and Linda Dewhurst, Steve and Jeanne Sims
Bob and Sharon Ley Lietzow, Carol Lee and Ken Robertson
Jessica Smith, Agbo Abiola and John Antel
President Khator and Can-Can Girls (aka Cougar Dolls)
Street entertainers
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Faculty
“A poet of risk” brings home big prize
Tony Hoagland, Associate Professor of English, and a professor in the Creative Writing program received the second annual Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers, Inc. The $50,000 prize honors an American poet of exceptional talent who has published at least one book of recognized literary merit, but has not received major national acclaim. The three-judge panel included poets Philip Levine, Robert Pinsky, and Ellen Bryant Voigt. An anonymous panel of peers nominated poets.
The judges said: “It's hard to imagine any aspect of contemporary American life that couldn't make its way into the writing of Tony Hoagland or a word in common or formal usage he would shy away from. He is a poet of risk: he risks wild laughter in poems that are totally heartfelt, poems you want to read out loud to anyone who needs to know the score and even more so to those who think they know the score. The framework of his writing is immense, almost as large as the tarnished nation he wandered into under the star of poetry.”
Hoagland also received the 2005 Mark Twain Award, given by the Poetry Foundation in recognition of a poet's contribution to humor in American poetry, and the 2005 O.B. Hardison Jr. Prize.
Two Fulbrighters for CLASS
Two CLASS faculty members received word this month that they are UH’s latest recipients of Fulbright fellowships!
Xiaoping Cong, Associate Professor of History, will conduct research in China next year. Her current work is on women and marriage in the People’s Republic of China.
Fred Schiff, Associate Professor of Communication in the School of Communication, heads off to northern Brazil for the 2008 Fall semester to collaborate with faculty and graduate students at the Universidade Federal da Bahia to design and carry out a cross-national study of upper class elites.
“Upper class elites and media corporations play central roles in political mobilization and regime legitimacy,” Schiff says. “The growth in the influences of downtown business coalitions and an inner circle of oligopoly corporations threaten democratic decision making.”
Schiff and other researchers will study class cultures and media assumptions to understand the effects and limits of what he calls the “ideological management” of society.
Journey to the bottom of the Earth
Mary Naus, Associate Professor of Psychology, Director of Developmental Psychology Training, and Director of the Health Psychology Research Group, was among more than 200 individuals recently making their first visit to Antarctica. This wasn’t just a frolicking journey to the bottom of the Earth for her, though; it was the completion of her goal to visit all seven continents, a goal she set after her breast-cancer diagnosis in 1999.
National Public Radio told her story and others last month on Morning Edition. You can read about it and listen to the feature at the National Public Radio web site.
White gets Co-Cathedral commission
David Ashley White, Director of the Moores School of Music, the Margaret M. Alkek and Margaret Alkek Williams Endowed Chair, and Professor of Composition and Music Theory, was one of only three composers commissioned to provide new compositions for the three-hour Mass of Dedication for the new Co-Cathedral of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston.
Happy Are All Who Fear The Lord “is a setting of Psalm 128 for the congregation and choir,” explains White. The choir performed the piece, accompanied by oboe and organ, during Communion.
Listen to one of his works, Magnificat, performed by The Choir of Saint Paul's United Methodist Church, Houston, under the direction of Robert Brewer, director and organist, and Francis Anderson, co-director. The work premiered at Westminster Abbey in 1989.
Get what you want without getting in trouble
Michael “Tate” Barkley’s book, Successful Ethical Decision Making: Get What You Want Without Getting in Trouble, has been published by Booksurge Publishing. Barkley is an Instructional Assistant Professor in the School of Communication teaching Fundamentals of Public Speaking, Business and Professional Communications and Communications Law and Ethics.
Find out more faculty news on the CLASS News and Events page.
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Students
CLASS students take top honors in academics, athletics
CLASS students competed with students from across the nation last month and came away with some impressive awards!
Let’s start with students from the Rebecca and John J. Moores School of Music, who brought home national and state titles.
The Halcyon Saxophone Quartet, under the direction of Karen Wylie, Affiliate Artist in Saxophone, won first place in the Winds Division at the Plowman Chamber Music Competition in Columbia, Mo., on March 29. They competed against groups representing Eastman, Juilliard, Oberlin, Cincinnati, and against a saxophone quartet from Michigan State to win in the final round. They have been invited to compete in two other major chamber music competitions in April: the Coleman (California) and Fischoff (Indiana) Chamber Music Competitions.
The members include senior performance major Steven Hicks from Houston, DMA performance major Holly Carlton from Holyoke, Mass., junior music education major Jameka Byrd from Missouri City, and sophomore music education major Robert Eason from Friendswood.
Jessica Wei Zhu, a junior piano major from the studio of Nancy Weems, Professor of Piano, won first prize in the Collegiate Young Artist Piano Competition national finals in Denver, Colo. The Music Teachers National Association sponsored the event on March 31 as part of its national convention. Zhu won the Texas and South Central Division competitions of MTNA to get to the finals. The grand prize includes a Steinway grand piano and possible concert appearances.
And speaking of grand, Ashlyn Rust, a vocal performance graduate student in the studio of Cynthia Clayton-Vasquez, received the $2,000 grand-prize in the 24th annual Young Texas Artists Music Competition last month in Conroe. And, she won the voice category division, which also carried a $2,000 prize. Photo courtesy of The Courier of Montgomery County and Thomas Boyston
Two CLASS students on the UH Swimming and Diving team earned All-America honors last month during the final day of the platform competition at the NCAA Women’s Swimming and Diving Championship at The Ohio State University in Columbus.
Freshman Lacey Truelove, competing in her first NCAA Championship, earned the best finish by any Cougar at the meet, finishing sixth on the platform with 272.35 points during the finals. Lacey, a Studio Arts major, is from London, Ontario.
Senior captain Ginni van Katwijk earned her second All-America honors by winning the consolation finals with 296.20 points. Ginni, a Sociology major from Grootebroek, Netherlands, also finished 10th on the 3-meter springboard on Friday.
Other CLASS students on the Cougar Swimming and Diving team include:
Anastasia Urevna Pozdniakova, a senior Studio Arts/Interior Design major from Elektrostal, Russia, who is training for this summer’s Olympic Games.
Sasha Schwendenwein, a junior with a double major in Broadcasting and Journalism and English/Creative Writing, is from Randburg, South Africa.
Nicole Vaiana, a senior Communication major from Sugar Land, Texas.
CLASS Cougars compete in Spring sports
The University of Houston men's Track and Field team won their second-straight team championship last month and their ninth overall at the 2008 Conference USA Indoor Track and Field Championships. The Cougars finished the meet with 152 points. The women finished fifth.
Head coach Leroy Burrell (’94 Radio and Television) was named the Men's Track and Field Coach of the Year, for the sixth time in his career. He also has three Women's Coach of the Year awards.
CLASS students on this year’s team include:
 Anthony Keller, a sophomore Psychology major from Kingwood, Texas.
 Carey Lacour, a senior Psychology major from Humble, Texas.
Caresir Hamilton, a senior Communication Disorders major from Mesquite, Texas.
The Cougar Baseball team fields five CLASSmates this season.
Ryan Lormand, is a senior Economics major from Waco, Texas.
Jimmy Cesario, is a junior Psychology major from New Orleans, La.
Derek Cloeren, is a junior Economics major from Orange, Texas.
Alberto Lopez, is a junior Sociology major from Waco, Texas.
Felix Fanaselle, is a junior Sociology major from Houston.
Three students from CLASS and an alumna are on the Cougar Tennis squad.
Leila Salek, is a senior Psychology major from Croydon, UK.
Vicky Simpson, is a junior Journalism major from Downham, UK.
Jordan McCombs is a junior Psychology major from Deer Park, Texas
Jo Keene (’03 Sociology), is the Assistant Coach. She’s originally from Kenilworth, UK.
The Cougar Golf team has one CLASS representative this Spring.
 Steven Frazier, is a senior Economics major from Houston.
CLASS student, photographs, featured by Associated Press
The Associated Press ran a story this month about Master of Fine Arts student Chuy Benitez. Chuy, MFA candidate in Photography and Digital Media, expects to graduate in May.
He was born and grew up in El Paso where he learned at an early age the lessons of identify and independence found in the Chicano civil rights movement, and where he studied the works of Chicano photographers and Mexican muralists.
Chuy graduated from Notre Dame in 2005 with a Bachelor’s degree in Photography. He moved to Houston to continue his education, and found a community deeply rooted in Mexican and American cultures. His Houston Cultura photographic study uses a digital panoramic technique that layers multiple shots of the same scene, reminiscent of Mexican muralists Diego Rivera and Saturnio Herran.
The Lawndale Art Center is showing Houston Cultura as part of FotoFest. You can view his photography on his Web site, Photography by Chuy Benitez.
Chuy Benitez is one of a dozen MFA students showing their works in the 2008 School of Art Masters Thesis Exhibition, at Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston, running now through April 26.
In both poetic and straightforward ways, this year’s graduates from the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Houston engage deeply with the issues that concern them—self-definition, social justice and responsibility, and an ambivalence toward the commercialism that surrounds us. A defining moment of their time here at the university happened during their first semester when Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast. The artwork of these twelve graduates offers us their reflections on watershed moments such as Katrina and other significant experiences of the world around them, from the humble to the extraordinary.
In her performances, Elia Arce releases what is inside of her with intense abandon. Born in Costa Rica, the artist moved at the age of 22 to the United States, where she was forced to redefine herself in an unfamiliar culture and a completely foreign language. Her experience with misunderstandings, alienation, and prejudice have informed her work ever since. In the late 1980s and early ‘90s, Arce was involved with the performing arts scene in Los Angeles. There, she developed collaborative improvisations and actions with the homeless, prostitutes, and immigrants at a time when the culture wars were marginalizing many performance artists. Later, Arce cultivated spiritual themes in her work and found that she could express these concepts with her body. With a keen intuition, she continues to plumb internal mysteries of love, fear, sexuality, and violence, and in so doing, manifests a ritual transformation of herself and her audience.
Raised on Mexican and Mexican American artistic traditions in El Paso, Texas, Chuy Benitez takes photographs from a Chicano point of view. His panoramic mise-en-scčnes and fish-eye 360-degree portraits of what the artist as dubbed “Leaders of Houston Cultura” tell multilayered stories about his community and the powerful personalities that inhabit it. The incredible detail of Benitez’s images has a subtle political significance. By showing as much factual evidence as possible, he hopes to combat any assumptions about the people he portrays and fully convey the varied contexts in which Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and Chicanos are living today. The photographer also uses digital technology to knit multiple exposures into one picture that, although requiring hours of labor on the computer, nonetheless captures its subject’s spontaneous actions. By creating technologically advanced photographs of rarely depicted individuals, gatherings, and rituals, Benitez is fulfilling an important role for his community—he is a record-keeper, storyteller, and revolutionary.
Jeanne Cassanova paints intricate worlds that are at once fantastical and uncannily familiar. Growing up in New Orleans around Mardi Gras, Catholicism, and hurricanes made her aware of the fragile relationship between the alluring and the repulsive. The painter seeks to harness this power to draw people in and fascinate them with the unpleasant. The outlined figures that Cassanova layers with colorful bursts of resin, glitter, beads, and flamboyant decorative patterns are taken from photos she had collected of dollar-store shoppers, game-show contestants, and other exemplary citizens of our saturated world. These people mirror our experience of shopping, watching television, and hungering for the abject beauty and manufactured desires to be attained therein. Influenced by both Pop art and Surrealism, her bewitching, hypercaffeinated dreamscapes entice us like a shiny shelf of trinkets laid out in a display case and invite us to invent stories about what is taking place there.
David Damico is a designer whose work goes beyond two-dimensional layouts to encompass animation, a psychological/typographic card game, and even sculpture. An avid reader who is deeply engaged in the history and forms of typography and its affect on meaning, he has been able to translate his theoretical studies into concrete creations, including typeface design and flash cards referencing the development of typography. About a year ago, he started printing texts on three-dimensional objects, creating a series of “collection boxes” and a sculptural installation based on Gaston Bachelard’s Poetics of Space. These works offered a tactile experience of words and space that mutually reflected one another, and Damico soon realized he could use this powerful technique to comment on politically charged themes, as he did in a series on Hurricane Katrina with jazz quotes printed on discarded materials. Most recently, he has been engaged in post-structuralist theory and ways that typography serves a semiotic function.
Jane Eifler’s oils carefully balance color, form, and texture in lush layers of abstractions. But as Pablo Picasso once said, “There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.” Eifler follows Picasso’s methodology of reality-once-removed and looks to magazines, fabrics, billboards, and advertisements as sources for her shapes and colors. In particular, she is interested in the visual stimulation one encounters while walking down the streets of a city such as Houston, where she has spent most of her life. Through transfer and translation, the painter’s inspirations are morphed and reborn. Each form is given a life and personality of its own that caresses, covers, reveals, and dances with its fellow characters on the canvas. Thus, the objects in Eifler’s paintings become communities unto themselves with their own alliances and tensions.
The large tower on the first floor of Blaffer Gallery was designed and built by Woody Golden, an artist who focuses on human connections to the earth and cosmos. It is a prototype for a stone or metal structure that will stand outdoors as a “terra-antenna,” gently funneling cosmic radiation into the ground. Scholars such as Phillip S. Callahan believe that round towers in Ireland were built for this purpose by Celtic people, who channeled radiation into the ground to increase rainfall, foment vegetation, and lengthen the lifespan of nearby plants and animals. Golden has studied these ancient structures in depth and intends to build his own version on his land in New Mexico. Like the Irish structures, the one in the gallery has a doorway raised above ground level. The interior is designed to promote meditation on the interconnectedness of the universe from subatomic particles to cosmic dust.
Sarah Hannah’s interior design is elegant and metaphorically rich. Hard geometries of squares and rectangles form the armature of her Blaffer Gallery installation. Two-by-fours are joined together in five-by-five-foot modules that are held to the wall with metal bracing and threaded rods. A white, scrimlike fabric hangs from a rod in front of the wood and on it is projected a black-and-white image of the pattern made by the two-by-fours. Time and movement are important components of the installation as the viewers who walk through the room cause the fabric to wave as their shadow passes in front of it. The wood pieces are also stamped “prime stud” by the manufacturer, a mark that is left visible to indicate the process the wood has gone through to get here. All in all, the wall construction implies a certain breathing, interior/exterior life and growth that mirror the human condition.
Luisa F. Hernández is a graphic communication major who is interested in ways that technology affects social and personal identity. As virtual reality becomes increasingly sophisticated, growing numbers of people are being drawn to programs in which they are asked to create an avatar, a digital representation of themselves. Since we have limited control over our appearance in real life, the avatar seemingly offers users the freedom to look however and be whomever they choose. But because software platforms offer a limited number of options, avatars are unavoidably homogenous, and their forms are created by companies whose primary concern is profit. So instead of being dictated by genetics and socioeconomic class, our virtual appearance is determined by technological capabilities and the market. Hernández’s work therefore seeks to combat the temptation to identify with avatars by fracturing the virtual figure from the personality it supposedly signifies.
Informed by the folk traditions of her native Bulgaria, Iskra Ivanova sculpts organic, life-size clay forms covered in layers of white, red, and black earth using the sgraffito technique. Her forms embody a duality of masculine and feminine elements. The masculine sculptures stand erect to express endurance and are covered with nonrepresentational marks reminiscent of the scars of suffering. The feminine works have onionlike shapes that are reminiscent of Byzantine domes and suggest a womb or breast with a central opening that alludes to birth. The merging of male and female elements is significant for the artist because of her self-identification with the mythological character Ulysses. Just as the hero traveled the ocean for many years, so has Ivanova left her home to see the world.
Ann Marie Nafziger’s paintings, prints, and wall drawings are inspired by those unexpected, fleeting moments when you see something amazing out of the corner of your eye or take notice of something in plain sight that you’ve never paid attention to before. Her hazy paintings layer semitransparent plantlike silhouettes with more abstract streaks and washes to create rich textures that reward prolonged looking with rich unpredictable experiences. The precise subject matter of Nafziger’s images cannot always be ascertained, but the viewer feels as if they are seeing through a dimly-lit mirror or sorting through a blurry memory in search of clarity. The painter has lived in Portland, Oregon, and Marfa and Houston, Texas over the past ten years; each location has affected the quality of light and the natural forms in her work, and the overgrowth of Houston’s natural and man-made landscape is no exception.
Kadriye Ozpolat’s interior design stresses the handmade and utilizes the dichotomy of craft and the factory-made for dramatic effect. Her work begins with the experience of using her hands to fabricate wall hangings, doorway decorations, and other interior accents. This process creates a physical bond between the maker and the object. Ozpolat has said, “This open dialogue enables the designer to learn as much about the material as herself.” Weaving, knitting, and crocheting are fundamental to her vocabulary and were learned from her mother in her native Turkey. However, she puts these techniques to work on metal, wood, and other unexpected media, thus causing the traditional and modern to become one. Through correct choice of material, careful lighting, and sensitivity to space, she creates domestic areas in which the viewer is surrounded by tactile experiences that resist rationality and insist on more intuitive sensitivities.
A unique hybridization of oil painting, photography, and performance, Kelli Vance’s artistic process begins when she stages an action, usually in a dramatic natural setting. She adopts a character for each that often relates to the pantheon of leading ladies—from damsels in distress to vixens—and performs their movements and emotions. A camera with a timer or a collaborator then photographs her performances, and these pictures end up as the source for the artist’s large canvases. The group of canvases thus becomes an almost cinematic experience in which Vance has controlled every detail in anticipation of the audience. By disconnecting the performance from herself and the viewer from the performance, she is simultaneously exposed physically and artistically yet concealed behind layers of interpretation and representation. In the process, we are made hyperaware of our own voyeurism as onlookers.
The 2008 School of Art Masters Thesis Exhibition is made possible through the generosity of the UH Student Fees Advisory Committee.
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Academics
African American Studies takes home national award
The African American Studies Program received the Sankore Award from the National Council for Black Studies in recognition of the programs contributions to the field of Africana Studies.
“We are proud to receive this award that is a testament to our dedicated and hardworking staff and faculty,” said James Conyers, Professor of African American Studies and AAS Director. “We look forward to advances in our program and to strengthening our faculty recruitment and development components.”
NCBS announced the award during its 32nd annual convention in Atlanta, Ga. Judges considered faculty research production and publication, partnerships in the community and academic excellence. Past award recipients have included the African American Studies programs at Georgia State, Dillard and Purdue.
“The African American Studies program and its leadership exemplify the two main principals of the organization—academic excellence and social responsibility,” said Charles Jones, NCBS president. “We considered the program’s Study Abroad Program, its lecture series and its external links to the African American community, like the S.H.A.P.E. Community Center and the Shrine of the Black Madonna.”
AAS, established in 1969, focuses on the history, culture, life and contributions of people of African descent. The program enrolls more than 170 UH students pursuing minors in African American Studies.
Also, please note that AAS hosts its 2008 Scholarship Banquet on May 2 at the Hilton University of Houston Hotel. For more information, call 713-743-2811.
University of Houston Department of English Writing Fellowships
The English Department has established the Houston Writing Fellows Program for writing instructors interested in joining a cohort of teachers and scholars committed to the theory and practice of writing pedagogy. The program will enhance the intellectual and pedagogical community of instructors involved in the Department’s writing courses by providing workshops, mini-conferences, mentorship opportunities, and other events that explore writing pedagogy. Writing Fellows teach within the University’s Core Curriculum, participate in the program of events, and contribute to the extended exploration of the theory and practice of writing pedagogy. They have opportunities to work with the Department’s faculty in Rhetoric, Composition, and Pedagogy, to explore and develop new pedagogies, and to enhance their own teaching practices.
Individuals who have received their Ph.D. or M.F.A. degrees within the past five years may apply. Writing Fellows normally teach the equivalent of four sections per semester of the Freshman Composition sequence (1303 or 1304), and will participate in the events, workshops, seminars offered by the Department’s writing program. The two-year Fellowships carry a stipend of $30,000, plus benefits, and a budget of up to $1,200 for conference travel and professional development.
Visit the Writing Fellowships page of the English web site for more information.
World Internet News – “The Whole Truth In Context”
Communication professor Steve Schiff, recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship (see story in Faculty section), reminded us that he and other faculty and students have a news Web site that serves the dual purpose of instructing students in news writing and providing news coverage not normally carried by the mainstream media.
World Internet News is a convergent newsroom, publishing online, on air, and through cable TV. Its stories focus on issues, not just events.
“We begin with the fundamental fact that the commercial news media routinely ignore or under-cover a wide range of issues, sources and points of view,” Schiff points out in the mission statement. “Low income households, working people, ethnic minorities, union members, women, gays, the young, the disabled and foreign nationals are usually marginalized by corporate news values. Executives, officials, businessmen, politicians and experts are the typical sources and subjects of mainstream news -- as if they represented the public in an unbiased and objective way.”
Students and faculty from the School of Communication write the stories and media critiques. Many of the pieces were broadcast on 30-minute "Not-For-Profit" News shows, produced for non-profit radio and cable channel partners. WIN works with KPFT 90.1-FM, which is a 100,000-watt, listener-sponsored Pacifica Network radio station, and with Houston Media Source, which operates WTP-TV Cable Channel 17.
The creation of an online news network produced by reporters and editors from leading public universities around the globe is the ultimate goal of WIN.
“We seek to become a 24/7 non-profit news service and public forum that delivers text, audio, video and graphics for free over the Internet,” Schiff says.
“We want to recruit investigative teams to consist of five to 10 students working under a faculty editor-publisher. We want a cooperative arrangement where reporters and editors continue to own what they produce and keep the copyrights to their work.”
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Alumni
University of Houston alumnus Adrees Latif (’00 Journalism) received the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography. The Pulitzer selection committee cited Latif for his photograph showing Agence France Presse photographer Kenji Nagai taking photographs as he lies fatally wounded after being shot by soldiers who tried to disperse a group of protesters in Yangon, Myanmar Sept. 27, 2007.
Latif was born in Pakistan in 1973. He and his family lived in Saudi Arabia before they moved to Houston in 1980. Latif worked as a staff photographer for The Houston Post, The Daily Cougar, and as a freelancer for the Houston Chronicle while attending school at the University of Houston’s School of Communication. He signed on with Reuters where he worked from Houston, Los Angeles, and Bangkok, where he has been covering news in Asia since 2003.
You can see more of Latif’s work in a slideshow on the Reuters web page
The White House announced President Bush’s intention to nominate Miguel R. San Juan (’74 Political Science), to be United States Executive Director of the Inter-American Development Bank, for a three-year term. San Juan is the Greater Houston Partnership Senior Vice President of the International Trade and Economic Development Division. Earlier in his career, he served as the Greater Houston Partnership President of World Trade, and was a vice president of government and public relations for CITGO Petroleum Corporation.
The Inter-American Development Bank, the oldest and largest regional bank in the world, is the main source of multilateral financing for economic, social and institutional development in Latin America and the Caribbean. Its loans and grants help finance development projects and support strategies to reduce poverty, expand growth, increase trade and investment, promote regional integration, and foster private sector development and modernization of the State. As a member of the Board of Executive Directors, San Juan will be responsible for day-to-day oversight of the Bank’s operations.
In 1990, President George H.W. Bush appointed him to the President's Export Council, the premier national advisory council. He also serves on the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo's development committee and is currently a member of Spaulding for Children's Board of Directors.
San Juan received the Order of Bernardo O'Higgins from the government of Chile for his extraordinary efforts to promote Houston-Chilean business ties. He also was listed in the October 1991 Hispanic Business magazine as one of the 100 most influential Hispanic businessmen.
Inauguration ceremonies were held this month for Timothy L. Hall (’78 Philosophy), the ninth president of Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tenn. The Tennessee Board of Regents unanimously selected Hall last May. He took over the post in August. Prior to his arrival in Clarksville, Hall was associate provost and associate vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Mississippi, Oxford. He was director of the University Studies 101 Program there from 1996-2003, and was a professor of law since 1989.
In 1983, Hall earned his juris doctorate with honors from the University of Texas School of Law, where he was named to the Order of the Coif and editor of the Texas Law Review. He graduated summa cum laude with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Houston in 1978. After working as a judicial clerk for the U.S. Court of Appeals and as a trial lawyer for an Austin law firm, Hall decided to enter higher education.
Lou Ann Todd Mock (’73 MA Psychology, ’75 Ph.D. Psychology) of Bellaire is a new member of the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists, appointed by Gov. Rick Perry. Mock is a licensed specialist in school psychology and an associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine. She is a member of the American Psychological Association and the Texas Psychological Association. She is also a staff psychologist for DePelchin Children’s Center. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Iowa and a master’s and doctorate degree in clinical psychology from the University of Houston. Mock replaces Pauline Clansy of Houston for a term to expire Oct. 31, 2013.
Young Smith (’03 Ph.D. Creative Writing and Literature) received the James Michener Fellowship in poetry, a Krakow Poetry Seminar Scholarship, and a Donald Barthelme Fellowship for fiction. He has received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Kentucky Arts Council. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Iowa Review, Pleiades, American Literary Review, Arts & Letters, Atlanta Review, The Midwest Quarterly, The New Orleans Review, and other publications. He is an assistant professor of English at Eastern Kentucky University. He lives with his wife, Janet Schwartz, and their daughter, Harper, in Lexington, Kentucky.
Find out more about CLASS alumni on the CLASS web site.
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Discovery
Our two guests this month come from the faculty ranks and from our student body. They’re examples of the outstanding class research that results from collaborations by faculty researchers and students.
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Around CLASS and Campus
CMAS Spring Conference
ˇMEXICO HOY! Economic Dependency, Social Inequality and Political Resistance in a Globalized World is the subject of the Center for Mexican American Studies on April 17-18 at the Hilton University of Houston Hotel. The conference will inform, clarify, and provoke discussion and dialogue over the current state of affairs in the Republic of Mexico, including the economic, ecological, political and social challenges facing Mexico and its people. The conference also will provide a critical perspective over these conditions and events to allow attendees an opportunity to become informed about the issues and events that affect our neighbor and our relations with Mexico.
Join us for a Breastival
America seems obsessed with breasts. As a result, many young women get breast implants, or consider the possibility. Is this a good idea? Is it safe? Join the UH Women’s Resource Center for a Breastival, featuring a pair of breast movies. Breasts: A Documentary features women talking about their breasts over the course of their lifetimes (some nudity shown as they bare their thoughts). Absolutely Safe is a new documentary that follows the stories of two Texas women, one getting implants and one removing hers.
When: Wednesday, April 23, from 11:30am - 1:30pm
Where: the Women's Resource Center
Contact: 713-743-5888
 Moores School of Music
Wednesday, April 16, 7:30 pm $10/5
JAZZ ORCHESTRA
JAZZ ENSEMBLE
Noe Marmolejo, director
Ryan Gabbart, assistant director
Friday, April 18, 7:30 pm $10/5
SYMPHONIC BAND SYMPHONIC WINDS
David Bertman, director
Works by Verdi, Debussy, Milhaud, King
Friday, April 18, 7 pm Saturday, April 19, 2:30 pm
SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA HOUSTON BALLET II*
Franz Anton Krager, conductor
Stanton Welch, HB artistic director
Works by Paulli, Czerny, Dvorak, Brahms
Cullen Theater, Wortham
Saturday, April 19, 7:30 pm $10/5
CHORAL ARTISTS
Charles Hausmann, conductor
Works by Poulenc, Orff, O’Reagan
Friday, April 25, 7:30 pm
CARMINA BURANA
by Carl Orff
Moores Opera House
Reserved Seating
$15 general/$10 students, and seniors
Friday, April 25, 7:30 pm $15/10RS
SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
CONCERT CHORALE
CONCERT WOMEN’S CHORUS
UNIVERSITY MEN’S/WOMEN’S CHORUSES
FORT BEND BOY CHOIR
Franz Anton Krager, conductor
Betsy Cook Weber, Richard Robbins,
Justin Smith, choral preparation
William Adams, Boy Choir director
Ticket information
Moores School of Music Concert Information and ticket line: 713.743.3313
Unless otherwise indicated, all performances have open seating. Patrons with disabilities who require special accommodations should call 713.743.3313 at least 24 hours in advance of performance.
School of Theatre and Dance
By Mickey Birnbaum
Directed by Jason Nodler
April 4 – 20, 2008
Thursday - Sunday* @ 8:00
*Sunday, April 6 performance is at 2:00
A dark comedy with pit bull cannibalism, death metal, war veterans, car crashes, drugs, sex, teen angst and the end of the world. Fasten your seatbelts and prepare to die.
This is a co-production with the newly formed Catastrophic Theatre.
“pitch-perfect tragicomedy” – Mercury
April 22 – 27, 2008
All shows at 7:30 pm
Seven new one-act plays by student playwrights mentored by Tony-award winner and Distinguished Lecturer Mark Medoff.
April 25 – 27, 2008
Friday & Saturday @ 8:00 pm
Sunday @ 2:00 pm
The UH Dance faculty and guest artists present works danced by the UH pre-professional dance company, the Ensemble.
Location: Moores Opera House, Rebecca and John J. Moores School of Music
Admission: $15 reserved seating
Information: 713-743-2929
The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts
EXHIBITION PREVIEW AND CURATOR'S TALK
Charles "Teenie" Harris: Rhapsody in Black and White, with Ronald K. Brown and Deborah Willis
Friday April 25
6:00 pm
Part of a city-wide collaboration involving the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts at the University of Houston, DiverseWorks, Society for the Performing Arts, Blaffer Gallery, and Project Row Houses, this exhibition of photographs by Charles "Teenie" Harris (1908 - 1998) is inspired Ronald K. Brown’s creation of One Shot.
Brown and co-curator Deborah Willis will talk about the exhibition and its relationship to One Shot in a roundtable discussion at the museum on April 25th, followed by an opening celebration.
Location: Blaffer Gallery, 120 Fine Arts Building
FREE ADMISSION
Information: 713-743-5749
PERFORMANCE
Nothing To It (An evening of itty bitty witty ditties)
The Art Guys
Saturday, May 3
8:00 pm
Declared as their "Silver Jubilee," 2008 is certainly the year of The Art Guys. See them in action and join us in celebrating their 25 years of collaboration. And as always, "Expect the Unexpected!"
Location: Lyndall Finley Wortham Theatre
University of Houston
(Entrance 16 off Cullen Blvd; free parking in Lot 16)
Admission: $10 general admission, $10 for students, $10 for children under 12, $10 for seniors, $12.50 for others
Ticket sales and Information: 713-743-2929
EXHIBITION
UH students and the Center for Land Use Interpretation
Friday, May 9
6:30 pm
An exhibition by University of Houston students working with Mitchell Center artists-in-residence, the Center for Land Use Interpretation. Students are from the UH School of Art, Creative Writing Program, and the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture.
Location: Lawndale Art Center, 4912 Main Street
FREE ADMISSION
Information: 713-743-5749
More at CLASS
For more information about what’s going on at CLASS, please visit our News & Events page.
Make sure you visit the CLASS home page for more information about our programs, students, faculty, and staff. Missed an issue of Graffit-e? Catch up by visiting the online archive.
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Transcript of Dean Antel's Video Message
Hello. My name is John Antel.
Talking about the outstanding faculty and students is one of the pleasures I have as Dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.
And this month, we have some great stories to share.
This month, Tony Hoagland, Associate Professor of English and a professor in the Creative Writing Program, received the second annual Jackson Poetry prize from Poets & Writers, Inc.
The $50,000 prize honors an American poet of exceptional talent who has published at least one book of recognized literary merit, but has not received major national acclaim.
Our Halcyon Saxophone Quartet, under the direction of Karen Wylie, affiliate artist in saxophone, won first place in the winds division at the Plowman Chamber Music Competition in Columbia, Mo., on March 29.
They competed against groups representing Eastman, Juilliard, Oberlin, Cincinnati, and against a saxophone quartet from Michigan State to win in the final round.
The members include Senior Performance major Steven Hicks, Dma Performance major Holly Carlton, Junior Music Education major Jameka Byrd ,And Sophomore Music Education major Robert Eason.
Jessica Wei Zhu, a Junior Piano major from the studio of Nancy Weems, Professor of Piano, won first prize in the Collegiate Young Artist Piano Competition sponsored by the Music Teachers National Association.
The national finals were held in Denver on March 31.
The grand prize includes a Steinway grand piano and possible concert appearances.
A grand voice meant a grand prize for Ashlyn Rust, a Vocal Performance Senior. Rust received the $2,000 grand-prize in the 24th annual Young Texas Artists Music Competition last month in Conroe.
And, she won the voice category division, which also carried a $2,000 prize.
And two class students on the Uh Swimming and Diving team earned All-America honors last month during the final day of the platform competition at the Ncaa Women’s Swimming And Diving Championship at The Ohio State University in Columbus.
Freshman Lacey Truelove is a Studio Arts major from from London, Ontario.
And Senior Captain Ginni Van Katwijk earned her second All-America honors. Ginni is a Sociology major.
You can read more about their accomplishments, and the accomplishments of other faculty, staff, and students in this month’s Graffit-e.
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CMAS hosts annual conference
