Feature
It was a hot time in Houston as 285 patrons, friends, and swells gathered on the University of Houston campus on May 15 to help Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston, celebrate its 35th anniversary and the quadrennial 2008 Houston Area Exhibition now showing. You can read more about the exhibition in the Around CLASS and Campus section of Graffit-e.
The annual benefit gala raised about $175,000 to help Blaffer present intellectually stimulating exhibitions that promote a spirit of investigation, collaboration, and dialogue.
The evening (sponsored by PaperCity) began at Blaffer Gallery with hors d’oeuvres, cocktails, and a viewing of the exhibition and the concurrent exhibition Charles “Teenie” Harris: Rhapsody in Black and White, which runs through Aug. 2. After the meeting and mingling, everyone went next door to the Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture atrium for the elegant, seated dinner catered by City Kitchen, which served tender fried chicken topped with a sweet mango chutney sauce, and a raspberry cobbler for dessert, all in keeping with the “all things Houston” theme of the evening.
Blaffer Board Chair Russell Sherrill and his wife Lisa, and gala co-chairs Katy and Michael Casey and Meg and Nelson Murray were joined by UH President Renu Khator and her husband Suresh; CLASS Dean John Antel and his wife Susan; honoree Nancy Hixon and her husband Carter; honoree and former Chair of the University of Houston System Board of Regents Morgan Dunn O’Connor; and former Blaffer director (now director of The Parish Art Museum in Southampton, New York) Terrie Sultan and her husband Christopher French.
Terrie Sultan, President Renu Khator, and UH System Regent Carroll Ray
Nelson and Meg Murray, and Katy and Michael Casey
Russell and Lisa Sherrill
Susan and John Antel
Morgan Dunn O'Connor
Nancy and Carter Hixon
Karen and Stephan Farber
Cindy Toles and Judy Nyquist
Claudia Schmuckli and Shirley Rose
Dorene and Frank Herzog
J. B. Fairbanks, Jay Baker, and Andrew McFarland
Karen Farber, Sasha Dela, and Lisa Sherrill
Seth Alverson and Gina Sonderegger
Simon Elyes
Tammy and Bob Casey
William Betts and Lynne McCabe
Veronica Reed and Colette Vallot
Thuy Tran and James Tiebout
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Faculty
Faculty promotions, tenure, and new professors emeritus
Each May, the University of Houston System Board of Regents approves recommendations from the President for the promotion and promotion with tenure of faculty members, and the appointment of professors emeritus. The Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs also grants tenure to those faculty members not receiving promotions. Tenure awarded at the University of Houston does not entail tenure at any other university of the University of Houston System. A faculty member receives tenure on the basis of teaching, research, and service excellence to date, consistent with the mission of the University. The awarding of tenure implies a high degree of confidence in the continuation and enhancement of this performance for the benefit of the university.
Several CLASS faculty members received promotions, promotions with tenure, and appointments as professors emeritus.
Sibylle Hagmann, Professor to Associate Professor with tenure
Professor Hagmann founded Kontour, her Houston-based design studio, in 2000. She works for clients such as the CORE Program of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Dallas Museum of Art; and the Fisher Gallery of the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, among others.
Before relocating to Houston, she was the art director of the University of Southern California School of Architecture, and taught at several southern Californian schools.
In 1999, she completed the typeface family ‘Cholla’, originally commissioned by Art Center College of Design and released by the digital type foundry Emigre in the same year. Her work has been featured in several publications and recognized by the Type Directors Club of New York.
Nick Flynn, Assistant Professor to Associate Professor with tenure
Flynn's first book, Some Ether (Graywolf Press, 2000), a finalist for the L.A. Times Book Prize, won the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, a 'Discovery'/THE NATION prize, and The Larry Levis Reading Prize from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Blind Huber, his second collection of poetry, appeared from Graywolf in 2002. Stanley Kunitz has called it “an act of the poetic imagination unlike any other.”
He also received fellowships from the Library of Congress and from the Guggenheim Foundation, in addition to his Amy Lowell Traveling Poetry Fellowship, which allowed him to spend two years moving from Italy to Ireland and to Tanzania.
Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, a memoir about his father and homelessness, was published by Norton in 2004.
 Dorothy Baker, Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English, Associate Professor to Professor
Baker’s teaching and research focus on early and antebellum American literature, the literature of New France, and literary translation. She is the author of Mythic Masks in Self-Reflexive Poetry (1986) and America’s Gothic Fiction: The Legacy of Magnalia Christi Americana (2007).
She also was the editor of Poetics in the Poem (1996) and The Silent and Soft Communion: The Spiritual Narratives of Sarah Pierpont Edwards and Sarah Prince Gill (2005).
She wrote many essays on the work of Cotton Mather, Hannah Webster Foster, Margaret Fuller, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Emily Dickinson, Paul LeJeune and Marie de l’Incarnation.
Baker received a 1995 UH Enron Teaching Award and the 2000 Master Teacher Award from the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences. She received research and travel grants from the American Council of Learned Societies.
Elizabeth Gregory, Director of the Women's Studies Program, Associate Professor to Professor
Gregory is the author of Quotation and Modern American Poetry: "Imaginary Gardens with Real Toads" (Rice University Press, 1996), which focuses on the work of T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams and Marianne Moore. She edited The Critical Response to Marianne Moore (Praeger Publishers, 2003). She is also the author of articles on modernism, confessional poetry, and Homer's heroines.
Her next book, Ready: Why Women Are Embracing the New Later Motherhood, from Basic Books, is now available. (You can read more about the book and watch an interview in the January issue of Graffit-e.
She teaches courses on British and American modernism, contemporary poetry, ancient and classical literature, feminist criticism, cultural criticism and American literature since 1860.
Steven Deyle, Associate Professor, tenure.
Deyle specializes in nineteenth-century U.S. social and political history, with a particular interest in slavery and the Old South. He came to the University of Houston in 2006.
Deyle’s first book, Carry Me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life (2005), examines the fundamentals of the domestic slave trade, or the buying and selling of American-born slaves, and the larger impact that it had on American society. It received the 2005 Southern Historical Association’s Bennett H. Wall Award for the best book on southern business or economic history published within the previous two years. It received nominations from Yale University’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition as one of three finalists for the society’s annual Frederick Douglass Prize.
Deyle also wrote several scholarly articles and book reviews. He is working on a new project that examines an unreported 1853 court case that involved the torture and murder of a Louisiana slave by his overseer. He believes this unique case can tell us much about the complex nature of crime and punishment in the antebellum South, and expose some of the social strains within that society.
 Jennifer Mishra, Associate Professor of Music and Music Education Coordinator, tenure.
Mishra researches in the area of music cognition, specifically focusing on performance memory. Her articles have appeared in Psychology of Music, Psychomusicology, Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education, Update: Applications of Research in Music Education, Contributions to Music Education, Research Perspectives in Music Education, Journal of String Research, and Asia Pacific Journal for Arts Education.
She is on the editorial board for the Journal of String Research and was formerly research chair for the Iowa Music Educators Association.
A specialist in graduate and continuing studies, Dr. Mishra teaches courses that focus on leadership training and the pragmatic understanding of research and statistics, psychology of music, and philosophy of music education.
 Peter Norton, Director of the Anxiety Disorder Clinic, Assistant Professor to Associate Professor with tenure
Norton’s research interests include:
- Anxiety Disorder
- Chronic Pain
- Diagnostic Models
- Treatment Outcome Research
 Jeremy Pettit, Director of the Mood Disorder and Suicide Research Program, Assistant Professor to Associate Professor with tenure
Pettit’s research interests include:
- Depression
- Suicidality
- Interpersonal Processes
- Depression-physical Health Overlap
- Development of Spanish-language Assessment Tools
Lynne Steinberg, Associate Professor, tenure
Steinberg’s research includes
- Applications of the psychometric methods of item response theory to personality and social psychological measurement issues
- Processes underlying responses to self-report questions
- Context effects in personality measurement
- Development and validation of new instruments for personality, social, and clinical research
Professors Emeritus
 Lynn Bliss, Program Head and Chair of the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, from 1997 to 2005, joined the University in 1997.
Bliss teaches courses on the topic of childhood language disorders. Her research focuses on the oral personal narratives of children with language impairments.
She has published articles on the cultural influences of narration. She is the recent author of two books, Discourse Impairments and Narrative Patterns.
Bliss is an ASHA Fellow, and was a Fulbright Scholar on the island of Cyprus. Her numerous honors include the Editors Award from Contemporary Issues in Communication Science and Disorders; Fell, American Speech-Language Hearing Association; Fulbright Scholarship; and Wayne State University Presidential Bonus Award.
Suzanne Bloom, joined the School of Art faculty in 1976 following six years of teaching at Smith College. She received two NEA Artist's Fellowship Grants - one for Video in 1976 and one for Photography in 1978.
Since 1974, Bloom and Professor Emeritus Ed Hill have exhibited collaboratively as MANUAL (Ed Hill/Suzanne Bloom). Their exhibitions including their digital photographs, videos, audio and programmed animations, and mixed media installations have been seen in 42 solo and more than 200 group shows held in 14 countries, 30 states, and 90 cities.
Their recent work includes a commission from the Hood Museum of Art to create time-based artwork in response to the Museum's collection. As a result, Archive Fever, a database of 113 animated sequences ranging from 1 to 40 minutes, and Opus CXXV, an hour-long HD video, are now in their permanent collection.
James Cleghorn, Associate Professor of English, was twice elected a "Top Prof" by the Mortar Board Society.
In the 1970s, he was co-director, with Sylvan Karchmer, of our nationally ranked Creative Writing Program; faculty advisor of Harvest (the UH literary magazine at the time); and faculty director for the Writers' Club.
Cleghorn has published poems in more than thirty magazines, including The Massachusetts Review, The Formalist, The Midwest Quarterly, Descant, and The Cape Rock. He’s also in two anthologies, East Coast Poets and Working from Silence.
 Fredell Lack, the C.W. Moores Professor of Violin in the Rebecca and John J. Moores of Music, and a graduate of The Juilliard School of Music, joined the UH faculty 42 years ago, in 1966. Over the years, she established an international reputation as a violin teacher and soloist.
She is a Queen Elizabeth of Belgium International Competition Laureate, and a winner of the prestigious Brooklyn Academy Young Artists Award. She made more than 20 European tours, 35 broadcasts for the BBC in England, and seven for Radio RIAS in Germany.
She was a soloist with orchestras including Halle Orchestra and Royal Philharmonic, Concertgebouw, Stockholm Philharmonic, symphonies of Berlin, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Houston, and the New York Philharmonic.
Her recordings are on Vox, CRI, Bay Cities, Centaur, and Albany. She established several scholarships, and started the A.I. Lack Distinguished Artist Series (in her father’s name), which allows the Moores School of Music to bring to campus noted musicians for lectures and master classes.
Jeffrey Lerner, Professor of Clarinet, Saxophone, and Chamber Music in the Moores School of Music, is a member of the Houston Grand Opera Orchestra. He performs regularly with the Winds of Texas and is known throughout the region as a clarinet soloist, saxophone soloist, clinician and freelance musician.
Lerner's Grammy semifinalist CD of Bernard Herrmann's Clarinet Quintet, Souvenirs de Voyage is available from Albany Records, [originally Bay Cities BCD 1014].
He performed with the New York City Opera, the New York Goldman Band, was principal clarinet with the Houston Symphony Orchestra, Houston Grand Opera, Houston Ballet, Texas Opera Theater, and the North Carolina Symphony Orchestras. He is an advocate of the “American School” of Clarinet and Saxophone playing.
Roger Sherman, joined the UH faculty in the Department of Economics in 1999. Prior to that, Sherman had a long and distinguished career at the University of Virginia where he served as Chair of the Department of Economics and Brown-Forman Professor of Economics.
At UH, he served as President of the Southern Economic Association, taught graduate and undergraduate courses in Industrial Organization and Regulation, chaired a junior faculty recruiting committee, served on the Department Executive Committee, and published four articles in peer review journals, including the Journal of Economic Perspectives and the Southern Economic Journal.
He wrote six books, more than 65 journal articles, and 14 book chapters. His memberships include the American Economic Association, Economic Science Association, Industrial Organization Society, Royal Economic Society, and the Southern Economic Society.
 John Sloan joined the UH faculty in the Department of Political Science in 1971.
Sloan has served on dozens of department, college and university committees. He conducted research at several presidential libraries. His publications include books on the Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan presidencies, and his latest work compares the Franklin Roosevelt and Reagan administrations. He has published four books, 40 book chapters and articles, and delivered more than 60 scholarly papers at national and international conferences.
 Ruth Tomfohrde, Professor of Piano in the Moores School of Music, graduated from The Juilliard School of Music. She came to UH in 1976 and has distinguished herself as an educator and as a performer.
She has received numerous awards, including a UH Teaching Excellence Award; Collegiate Teacher of the Year, Texas Music Teachers Association; Teacher of the Year, Houston Music Teachers Association; Top Professor by Mortar Board, University of Houston; honoree at the Moores School of Music Society's 1992 annual dinner concert; and Music Leadership Award from Sigma Alpha Iota (IOTA), Houston Alumnae Chapter.
She has been a solo recitalist and soloist with U.S. orchestras; collaborator with singers, instrumentalists, and pianists in chamber music; collaborative recitals at Alice Tully Hall and Weill Hall in New York City and Wigmore Hall in London. Her collaborative CDs are on Albany Records and Koch International labels.
Congratulations to our newly promoted, newly promoted with tenure, tenured, and newly appointed professors emeritus!
 When David Francis (’84 MA Psychology, ’85 Ph.D. Psychology), Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor, Chair of the Department of Psychology, and Director of the Texas Institute for Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistics (TIMES), received the Esther Farfel Award last month, he became the ninth CLASS faculty member to receive the University’s highest faculty award since its inception in 1979. That’s a pretty good representation, especially when considers the world-class professors teaching or who have taught at our university.
We thought you might like to meet the other eight Farfels.
1980
Richard Evans
Distinguished Professor of Psychology
Director of the Social Psychology/Behavioral Medicine Research Group
Director of the Dialogues
with Notable Contributors to Psychology Project
Department of Psychology
You could characterize Evans’ academic career by using the term innovation. The second Farfel recipient was the first professor in the nation to offer a televised college course. His pioneering research on the effectiveness of broadcast courses helped shape today’s growing field of distance education.
With support from the National Science Foundation, Evans also conducts his Notable Contributors to Psychology project, an oral-visual history program of recorded dialogues with leading psychologists. His interview subjects include Jean Piaget, Erik Erikson, B. F. Skinner, Konrad Lorenz, Gordon Allport, Carl Rogers, Erich Fromm, and the first recorded interview granted by Carl Jung. These interviews enhance classroom instruction in more than 300 universities today.
1981
Gertrud B. Pickar
Professor of German, Faculty Emerita
Department of Modern and Classical Languages
Pickar, the University’s third Farfel recipient, accepted a permanent position with our faculty in 1966, thus starting a remarkable 30-year UH career. Along the way, she garnered the Allegheny College Distinguished Alumni Gold Citation in 1983, and the UH Teaching Excellence Award in 1985. She served as department chair for 11 years while still finding the time to publish seven books and more than 50 scholarly articles. Pickar retired in 1996 and moved to the rural splendor of the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas.
1983
Fredell Lack
C. W. Moores Professor of Music, Artist-in-Residence
Rebecca and John J. Moores School of Music
Lack was six years old when she began studying the violin. After graduating from the Juilliard Graduate School of Music, she embarked on a dazzling career as a concert soloist, winning many artistic awards. She has performed as soloist with the world’s finest orchestras, making more than 20 European concert tours, and touring Israel, Canada, Central America, and Mexico. Her recordings are available on five record labels.
But Lack’s artistry does not end at the steps of the concert hall or the doors of the recording studio. She has been instrumental in bringing the world of music to thousands of youngsters in the Houston area, as a professor and as founder of Young Audiences of Houston, which received non-profit status in 1956, with support from Ima Hogg and Mrs. William P. Hobby. In 1979, she received the Fredell Lack Award, given annually to recognize outstanding contributions to the arts in education. When the Moores Opera House opened its doors in 1997, Lack received a Lifetime Achievement Award, recognizing her 40 years of service to the University of Houston.
1990
Cynthia Macdonald
Professor of English
Department of English - Creative Writing
Cynthia Macdonald never imagined she would work for the University of Houston. She was an established poet and tenured professor at Johns Hopkins University when she consulted for UH in establishing our graduate Creative Writing Program in 1978. At first, she turned down the offer to direct the program and move to Texas, seemingly a far piece from the known literary world. When she decided to joined the program in 1979, her writer-colleagues on the East Coast offered her their sympathies, assuming she’d failed to get tenure at Johns Hopkins.
1992
Sidney Berger
Professor of Theatre
and
a John and Rebecca Moores Scholar
School of Theatre and Dance
Berger celebrated his 30th year with the University when he received his Farfel in 1992.
When he arrived here in 1969, having earned his doctorate from the University of Kansas, he set to work immediately to develop the fledgling theatre department. In the years to come, he would bring some of the most famous names in American theatre to the University of Houston.
The former Director of the School of Theatre and Dance, Berger also is the founder and producing director of the Houston Shakespeare Festival and co-founder and producer of the Children's Theatre Festival, UH's professional summer projects.
1995
Nicolás Kanellos
Director of Arte Público Press
Brown Foundation, Inc.
Professor of Hispanic Literature
Department of Hispanic Studies
In the 1970s, Kanellos’ involvement with the Latino civil rights movement exposed him to many Hispanic artists and writers with little or no access to the publishing world. So, in 1972, he founded The Americas Review (then called Revista Chicano-Riqueño) at Indiana University Northwest. In 1979, he launched Arte Público Press to provide a wider forum for Hispanic literary voices. He brought the growing press to UH in 1980 to position it at the heart of the growing US Hispanic population.
Kanellos also manages the Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage Project, where UH doctoral candidates locate and publish long ignored Hispanic historical documents as part of an effort to broaden what is considered American heritage.
1998
James Gibson
Cullen Distinguished Professor of Political Science
Department of Political Science
Gibson had been with the University for 15 years when he received his Farfel. He served six years as a Distinguished University Professor of Political Science until 1996, when he was named Cullen Distinguished Professor. As a teacher, Gibson stressed the process of learning as much as the content he taught.
2005
Martin Melosi
Distinguished University Professor of History
Director of the Center for Public History
Director of the Tenneco Distinguished Lecture Series
Department of History
Melosi has written 10 books, including Garbage in the Cities: Refuse, Reform and the Environment, Public History and the Environment and the award-winning The Sanitary City: Urban Infrastructure in America from Colonial Times to the Present.
His next book, Energy Metropolis: An Environmental History of Houston and the Gulf Coast, focuses on the environmental history of Houston. Joseph Pratt, Cullen Professor of Business and History, co-authored the book.
Find out more faculty news on the CLASS News and Events page.
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Students
CLASS Commencement
This month in Graffit-e, we continue our 2008 Commencement coverage with the undergraduate commencement speech and with video of all the students who participated in the May 9 ceremonies in Hofheinz Pavilion.
That’s right. Where else but Graffit-e can you sit at home or in the office and still be a part of your student’s college graduation? We think it’s kind of neat.
Anyway, about 1,100 undergraduates applied for graduation this year, and of that number, about 750 showed up in caps and gowns with families and friends.
CLASS doesn’t bring in outside guest speakers. A panel of faculty, staff, students, and alumni selects our commencement speakers through a speech competition, which bears no resemblance to American Idol. Well, except for when one of our faculty panelists gets carried away and says, “You rock, Dawg!”
Melva Katheryn Quincanna Washington Becnel (or simply Melva for those who know her), who graduated with a double major in Spanish and Chinese Studies, gave the undergraduate address. She’ll be a student in the UH Law Center in the fall.
After you watch her speech by clicking on the link above, come on back and watch your student or students take the big walk and shake hands with the dean.
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Academics
 The Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, also known as ComD, is our featured Academic program for the month.
ComD’s undergraduate program provides the pre-professional academic coursework in audiology and speech pathology. Majors in ComD obtain a firm understanding of normal communication processes, the normal structure and function of the speech and hearing mechanisms, and the normal development of communication abilities in children and adults.
The curriculum requires 46 hours in the ComD major sequence, which includes courses in Psychology. The undergraduate degree is considered a pre-professional degree. To be certified as a speech-language pathologist or audiologist, requires a Master's degree. The American Speech-Language and Hearing Association sets the certification requirement standards.
A student with a major in ComD prepares for a career as a speech-language pathologist or audiologist. Professional speech-language pathologists and audiologists provide diagnostic and therapeutic services to individuals who present a variety of communication disorders. For example, they treat individuals who stutter, have articulation disorders, have language problems, have had a stroke, have lost their voice, or have a loss of hearing abilities. They perform these diagnostic and therapeutic services in a variety of settings, including public schools, community clinics, hospitals, and private practices.
 Prof. Lynn Maher is the department Chair. She has faculty appointments at Baylor College of Medicine, Rice University, and the University of Oslo. She is a Research Health Science Specialist at Houston’s Michael E. DeBakey VA Medical Center, and an Investigator in the VA Brain Rehabilitation Research Center of Excellence in Gainesville, Fla. Her research interests, funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Veterans Administration, are in the understanding and rehabilitation of aphasia and related disorders.
Visit the ComD web site to learn more about the program, degree requirements, and professional opportunities.
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Alumni
 The literary buzz grows daily about UH alumna Marisa de los Santos (’96 Ph.D. Creative Writing). The daughter of a surgeon father from the Philippines and a nurse mother from Maryland, Marisa grew up in Baltimore, Md., and northern Virginia.
She gained early success with her poetry collection From The Bones Out (University of South Carolina Press, 1999, 96 pages).
She went on to write Love Walked In (Plume, 2006, 320 pages), sitting at #13 (in the second week of June) on Amazon’s list of Contemporary Romance novels. Publishers Weekly asked the question: “Chick lit? You bet: with rights sold in at least eight countries, and, indeed, to Paramount—Sarah Jessica Parker will star and coproduce with Sideways's Michael London. The book is fine, but for this property, it's a case of waiting for Carrie to walk in.”
Her second novel, which just came out, Belong to Me (William Morrow, 2008, 400 pages), ranks #56 on Amazon’s list of Literary books. Barnes & Noble included the novel in the Barnes & Noble Recommends series, calling it “unputdownable” and “especially appropriate for book discussion groups.”
Marisa teaches at the University of Delaware Associate in Arts program, as does her husband, David Teague, whom she met while she was getting her master’s degree at Sarah Lawrence College. They got hitched in 1992, and they have two children: Charles (8) and Annabel (6).
Watch videos of Marisa on Amazon and on Barnes & Noble.
A couple of Cougars head up state and local campaigns.
Bill Kelly (’02 Political Science) is the General Campaign Manager for the Harris County Democratic Party 2008 Coordinated Campaign. Bill’s campaign experience includes:
- Campaign Manager for Ellen Cohen’s successful campaign for Texas Legislature in 2006, resulting in the unseating of the Republican incumbent in a district which had voted heavily for Republican candidates in the past
- Campaign Manager for Peter Brown’s successful citywide campaign for Houston City Council Member At-Large Position 1 in 2005
- Field Director for Hubert Vo’s election to the Texas Legislature against an entrenched Republican incumbent House committee chair in 2004
- Deputy Field Director for Houston mayor Bill White’s 2003 campaign
Kelly also serves of the Houston Chapter of Planned Parenthood Young Leaders board and the Houston Alumni Board for Sigma Phi Epsilon, and is the outgoing Vice President of Finance for the Texas Young Democrats.
The Colorado GOP has James Garcia (’06 Political Science) as its Victory 2008 State Director. Garcia served as Vice Chairman of College Republicans at the University of Houston.
Garcia also served as
- Field Director for the Rudy Giuliani Presidential Committee in Iowa and Florida
- Field Director for the Congressional run by former Houston City Council Member Shelley Sekula Gibbs
- Member of the Tom DeLay Congressional Committee in Sugar Land, Texas.
Find out more about CLASS alumni on the CLASS web site.
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Discovery
This month, we continue our conversations with CLASS faculty researchers and their students.
Michael Berryhill, Assistant Professor in the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication, visits with John David Powell, Interim Director of Communication for the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, about his current research into Texas prisons.
And we meet Ronnie Turner, a student in the Valenti School and a sports writer for The Daily Cougar and the Houston Chronicle.
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Around CLASS and Campus
 Children's Theatre Festival
With two shows each summer, the Children’s Theatre Festival presents classic storybook tales and world premiere musicals. Each year, thousands of families enjoy live, wholesome theatre; many for the first time.
Recent premieres included the musicals The Princess Who Could Not Be Heard, Danny and the Dragon, The New Adventures of Pinocchio, The Land of Broken Toys, and Brandon Finds His Stars, written by Broadway composer/lyricist, Jerry Bock (1960 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and Tony Award for Best Musical for Fiorello!, and Tony awards in 1965 for Best Musical and Best Composer and Lyricist for Fiddler on the Roof) and Sidney Berger, John and Rebecca Moores Professor in the School of Theatre and Dance and co-founder of the Children’s Theatre Festival and the Houston Shakespeare Festival
Here are links to television and radio stories recently aired on Houston’s KPRC, KTRH (video clip), and KUHF (audio clip).
Sleeping Beauty
June 11 - 20, 2008
Schedule of performances
| Wednesday, June 11 |
10:30am and 1pm |
| Thursday, June 12 |
10:30am |
| Friday, June 13 |
10:30am |
| Sunday, June 15 |
2:00pm |
| Monday, June 16 |
10:30am |
| Tuesday, June 17 |
10:30am and 1pm |
| Wednesday, June 18 |
10:30am and 1pm |
| Thursday, June 19 |
10:30am |
| Friday, June 20 |
10:30am |
The Emperor's New Clothes
July 8 - 18, 2008
Schedule of performances
| Tuesday, July 8 |
10:30am |
| Wednesday, July 9 |
10:30am |
| Thursday, July 10 |
10:30am and 1pm |
| Friday, July 11 |
10:30am |
| Sunday, July 13 |
2:00 pm |
| Monday, July 14 |
10:30am |
| Tuesday, July 15 |
10:30am |
| Wednesday, July 16 |
10:30am and 1pm |
| Thursday, July 17 |
10:30am |
| Friday, July 18 |
10:30am |
Ticket information for all shows
Single Tickets
| Children |
$8.00 |
| Adults |
$9.00 |
Two-Play Subscriptions
| Children |
$15.00 |
| Adults |
$17.00 |
Group Rates
| 10-25 |
$6.25 per person |
| 24-49 |
$6.00 per person |
| 50 + |
$5.50 per person |
To receive a group rate, reservations must be made in advance by telephone. Groups should arrive 30 minutes before curtain time to ensure seating.
Box Office: 713-743-2929
Houston Shakespeare Festival
Now celebrating its thirty-fourth season, the Houston Shakespeare Festival has grown into one of the major events on Houston's summer entertainment calendar.
In 1975, Sidney Berger, then Director of the School of Theatre and Dance, met with university administrators and the Miller Theatre Advisory Council to enlist support for a two-production season of Shakespeare's works to be played in repertory on Miller Theatre's stage. Overwhelming enthusiasm greeted the trial season as attendance exceeded expectations and letters of appreciation from fans and city officials poured in.
Now an annual Houston tradition, the Houston Shakespeare Festival attracts thousands of people from around the country who enjoy free live theatre from one of the greatest playwrights of all time.
Julius Caesar
August 1, 3, 5, 7, 9
Cymbeline
August 2, 6, 8, 10
All shows are at 8:30 pm and tickets are free.
Please visit the Miller Outdoor Theatre Web site for directions and instructions on how to pick up your free tickets!
The 2008 Houston Area Exhibition, selected by curator Claudia Schmuckli of Blaffer Gallery, the Art Museum of the University of Houston, not only introduces new or young artists to the Houston community, but it also offers more experienced artists the opportunity to develop new work and to be seen in a fresh light. Held very four years, the Houston Area Exhibition takes the pulse of Houston’s contemporary art to offer a snapshot of what matters to artists in the here and now.
Running through August 2, the exhibition and publication are made possible, in part, by Occidental Energy Marketing, Inc., the George and Mary Josephine Hamman Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. I. H. Kempner, III, Nancy and Rob Martin, Judy and Scott Nyquist, and the Karen & Eric Pulaski Philanthropic Fund.
Photographer Charles ‘Teenie’ Harris, Inspiration For Major Choreographic Work, Celebrated Through Exhibition at UH Blaffer Gallery
By Mike Emery
Few things eluded the watchful eye of Charles “Teenie” Harris during his time as a photographer for one of the nation’s premiere African American newspapers, The Pittsburgh Courier. Between 1931 and 1975, the trailblazing photojournalist captured countless images of his community, sporting events and celebrities.
Houstonians now can learn more about the man as his photos make a seamless transition from gallery exhibition to stage performance during two dynamic events. Harris’ work will be on view in the exhibition Charles ‘Teenie’ Harris: Rhapsody in Black and White, which runs through Aug. 2 at Blaffer Gallery. Noted choreographer Ronald K. Brown and photographic arts expert Deborah Willis are curators for the exhibition, presented by the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts.
Shifts in Time, which offers a look at African American community life through Harris’s work, as well as through the eyes of students from UH and Jack Yates High School, runs concurrently with the video installation.
The 2008 Immanuel & Helen Olshan Texas Music Festival runs from May 30 to June 28.
Founded in 1990, the festival provides young professional musicians with a challenging musical environment in which to develop skills in orchestral, chamber music, and solo performance. Distinguished faculty artists from the Rebecca and John J. Moores School of Music, members of the Houston Symphony, and international guests guide the students during the four-week orchestral fellowship program on the University of Houston campus. Many festival faculty members perform as soloists with the festival orchestra and as part of the Distinguished Artist Series.
Visit the Season Schedule page of the Texas Music Festival Web site for season schedule and ticket information.
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. I am the Dean of your College of Liberal Arts And Social Sciences.
Once again I want to send congratulations to all of our new alumni . . . Those students who completed their undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral degrees last month.
The student section in this month’s Graffit-e contains links to streaming video of commencement, arranged by majors. If you had a student graduate, I know you’ll want to watch it again.
Last month, our own David Francis received the Esther Farfel Award, the university’s top faculty honor. David is just the latest class faculty member to receive the award. You can meet the others in this month’s faculty section.
Also in the faculty section you will meet our newly promoted faculty, our faculty who received tenure, and our new professors emeritus. I hope you’ll join me in congratulating them on these milestones in their careers.
We have a lot to be proud of this year. The partnership between our School Of Theatre And Dance and the Alley Theatre is just one example. The partnership creates 20 full graduate assistantships. It also incorporates some of our graduate students into alley theatre productions.
It also allows alley theatre company members to mentor our grad students, serve as guest directors for our productions, and assist in recruitment.
As always, we’re grateful to the continued support of the Houston community and of our alumni around the world. As you read this month’s newsletter, I’d like for you to think of ways you can help your college, our students, and our faculty.
We’d like to hear from you.
Transcript of Intro for Discovery
From the television studios of the Jack J. Valenti School of Communication at the University of Houston, welcome to the Discovery section of Graffit-e, the electronic newsletter of the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences.
My name is John David Powell.
Our two guests this month come from the Valenti School.
Michael Berryhill joined the faculty in 2006 after working as a journalist for more than 25 years.
His freelance work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Harper's, the New Republic, Vogue, and Sports Illustrated.
He was a reporter for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Houston Press, the fine arts editor for the Houston Chronicle, and the editor of Houstonian Magazine and Texas Parks and Wildlife Magazine.
In 1994, the Houston Press Club named him the print journalist of the year.
Professor Berryhill also taught American Literature and Creative Writing at Vassar College, and he was Fulbright Junior Lecturer in American Studies in Lyon, France.
He is a graduate of Kenyon College and he earned his master’s and doctorate in American Studies at the University of Minnesota.
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