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MSDE

Africa & Its Influences, Jazz & America, and Considering the Postmodern

2000
University of Maryland, College Park


Faculty Biographies

(in alphabetical order)

Martha Bari, Department of Art History & Archaeology, University of Maryland
A doctoral candidate in Art History, Ms. Bari's research focuses on Yoko Ono, Yayoi Kusama, and the New York avant-garde in the 1960s. Bari regularly teaches undergraduate courses in twentieth-century art and Asian art at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Hood College. She has lectured extensively in the Baltimore-Washington area on various aspects of Western and Asian art. Her engagements have included talks at the Textile Museum, the Walters Art Gallery, the Sackler Gallery American University, Hood College, and the University of Maryland, College Park. This summer, she is a staff lecturer for the special exhibition "The Impressionists at Argentcuil" at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Clinton L. Carbon, Department of Theater Arts, Howard University
Currently a Theater Arts Instructor at Howard University, Mr. Carbon has a BFA in Drama and a Masters of Art Administration. He is an accomplished director, dancer, choreographer, and singer with many productions to his credit. He has served as both Artistic and Program Director for Howard University's Children's Theater and the Playmakers Repertory Company. In his twenty one years as an educator, Mr. Carbon has taught and served as department head and administrator in schools, including St. Andrew's Episcopal School in Bethesda, where he was a founding teacher, Episcopal High School in Houston, where he served as Assistant Headmaster, and Pilgrim School in Los Angeles, where he was Headmaster. In each institution, he instituted performing and visual arts programs while advocating the complete integration of the arts into the classroom. Mr. Carbon has served on the Board of Directors of the Houston Conservatory of Music, the Independent School Alliance for Minority Affairs in Los Angeles, and committees for the National Association of Independent Scholars and the Independent Schools Association of the Southwest. In the future, Mr. Carbon plans to pursue a Ph.D. while continuing to research and write about the history of the internationally acclaimed Howard University Players.

Dr. Richard Deasy, Director, Arts Education Partnership, Washington D.C.
Dr. Deasy is the Director of the Arts Education Partnership, a private, nonprofit coalition of education, arts, business, philanthropic, and governmental organizations that demonstrate and promote the essential role of arts education in enabling all students to succeed in school, life, and work. Over 100 national organizations committed to promoting arts education in elementary and secondary schools throughout the country have joined to help states and local school districts integrate the arts into their educational improvement plans. Dr. Deasy has enjoyed successful careers in education, international cultural affairs, and journalism. He served for ten years as Assistant State Superintendent of Schools for Maryland, where he was responsible for all statewide assessments and adopted the first curriculum requirements in the arts. He established a summer center for students in the performing and visual arts and provided grant support to educational and cultural institutions in the state to provide professional development for arts teachers as well as outreach programs for students. In addition, he has served as the Executive Assistant to the Secretary of Education in Pennsylvania and the President and CEO of the National Council for International Visitors. As a prize-wining journalist, Dr. Deasy covered politics and government at state and local levels. He was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on housing and urban affair in Philadelphia. He has been a teacher of English, religion, and philosophy at secondary and university levels and has served on a variety of nonprofit boards of directors.

Dr. Robert Gibson, Music Composition, School of Music, University of Maryland
Dr. Gibson is a Professor of Composition at the University of Maryland, a composer member of the Contemporary Music Forum of Washington DC, and a performer of new music and jazz who has appeared with numerous local and internationally recognized jazz artists. His compositions have been performed throughout the United States, including concerts at the national conferences of The College Music Society, Society of Composers, Inc., and the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States. His works have also been presented on National Public Radio and in South America and Europe. Among Dr. Gibson's awards in composition are six Creative and Performing Arts Awards from the University of Maryland Graduate School and the Artist Fellowship in Music from the Maryland State Arts Council. His Chamber Music appears on Fanfare magazine's 1996 Want List as one of critic William Zagorski's five notable recordings of the year.

Catherine Hays, Coordinator of Digital Technology and Electronic Media and the Director of the Electronic Media Center, College of Arts & Humanities at University of Maryland
As Coordinator of Digital Technology and Electronic Media for the College of Arts and Humanities at University of Maryland, Catherine Hays works with faculty, staff and students to use digital imagery and multi-media technologies for teaching, learning, research and making art. In this capacity, Catherine manages a multimedia resource lab, the Electronic Media Center, for the college, and she is actively involved in faculty training programs. She also serves as a technical liaison on special projects and committees involving technology in education. Catherine received a Master of Arts in Education and Human Development from the George Washington University, Educational Technology Leadership Program, and she studied art history as an undergraduate at the from the George Washington University, Educational Technology Leadership Program, and she studied art history as an undergraduate at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Djimo Kouyate, Lecturer, African Drumming, School of Music, University of Maryland
Djimo Kouyate is an oral historian who has served the Cultural Ministry of Senegal for twenty years as a founding member of the National Dance Company and an instructor of kora music at L'Institute National des Arts. Presently in the US, Mr. Kouyate is the co-founder and director of Memory of African Culture, Inc., a cultural and educational arts organization based in Washington DC since 1983. He is the leader, composer, and arranger for the contemporary African music ensemble, Mamaya African Jazz. He is an adjunct lecturer of African Music and Ethnomusicology at the University of Maryland where he also organized and directed the Mande Foli International African Music and Dance Conference. Having taught as a guest lecturer at numerous universities, Mr. Kouyate's work as a historian of African cultural traditions has reached thousands of students over the past 17 years. He is the recipient of Individual Fellowship Awards from the DC Commission on the Arts, Arts Education Fellowship Award, and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts Music Program. He has several recordings, including Djimo: West African Kora Music, African Odyssey, and Diali Djimo Kouyate: Khabila.

Living Stage Theatre Company, Oran Sandel, Artistic Director, Washington, D.C.
For 34 years, Living Stage Theatre Company has affected social change through the art of improvisational theater. Working from the fundamental belief that everyone is an artist with the need to create, the Company conducts workshops in regularly scheduled sessions with children, teens and adults who typically lack access to avenues of creative development. Living Stage also offers training in its philosophy and techniques to artists, educators, human service professionals, parents and others who want to discover how to make use of their creativity and how to nurture creativity in others.

An actor/educator at Living Stage since 1977, Oran Sandel was named Associate Director in 1992 and Artistic Director in 1995. Mr. Sandel received his degree in Theater from Catholic University. In addition to his many years of experience with Living Stage, he has performed in theaters throughout the Washington area, including the New Playwright's Theatre, the Source Theatre, the Federal Theatre Company, the Back Alley Theater and Ford's Theatre. He has trained in Suzuki technique with Tadashi Suzuki in Toga Mura, Japan, and in Grotowski Technique with Zbignew Cynkutis and with Barry and Helen Meiner of the Iowa Theater Lab. Mr. Sandel's expertise in the field of creativity and social change has been called upon by social service and arts agencies throughout the country and internationally. He is currently the head trainer for the Washington, D.C. Children First Partnership Project, a coalition of early childhood service providers working to build the arts into their curricula. Through the Living Stage Residency program, he has lead master workshops in the creative process for artists and community activists in such communities as East Palo Alto, California; Newark, Delaware; and Revysklen, Sweden. In 1994, he worked with a group of artists who, under the aegis of the Greater Columbus Arts Council and the Corporation for National Service (Americorps) are setting up arts programs in community centers throughout the Columbus area. He also serves on the faculty of the National Theatre of the Deaf's Professional Theatre School and has taught in the Model Secondary School for the Deaf's Young Scholars' Program. He has conducted training sessions for many other District agencies, including Sasha Bruce Youthworks, Manna, Inc., the Community Services Program of the District of Columbia's Youth Services Agency, the District's Alcohol and Drug Abuse Services Administration, and District of Columbia Public Schools.

Dr. Kip Lornell, Departments of Music and American Studies, The George Washington University
Dr. Lornell has a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology and is a professor of Africana Studies, Music, and American Studies at George Washington University and serves as a Research Associate at the Smithsonian. He has received fifteen grants and fellowships from such as donors as the National Endowment for the Arts, Mellon Foundation, Smithsonian, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was a awarded a Grammy, the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award, and the University of Memphis Distinguished Young Alumni Award. Since 1973, Dr. Lornell has published fifty articles in popular journals and twelve scholarly contributions or chapters in American Music, Current Musicology, Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and Journal of American Studies. Among his seven books are American Folk: The Grassroots of Popular Music and Musics of Multicultural America.

Dr. Greg Metcalf, Department of Art History and Archaeology, University of Maryland
Dr. Metcalf has a doctorate in American Studies from the University of Maryland (dealing with the arts from a cultural context), and an MFA in Painting and Graphics from Bowling Green State University. A Visiting Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of Maryland, Dr. Metcalf has also taught the arts and culture and studio art courses at Johns Hopkins University, Prince George's Community College and the Smithsonian Institution. He has published articles on film and culture, contemporary popular and high art in the Journal of Popular Culture and various scholarly catalogs and collections. He has been invited to lecture and direct colloquium on Modernism and Postmodernism and Art at Columbia College, the University of Central Arkansas and New Mexico State University. Dr. Metcalf is an exhibiting sculptor, creating Congolese-inspired ritual sculpture for contemporary American society and bricollage constructions. Outside of academe, Dr. Metcalf also worked as an illustrator and clothing designer, a radio producer, and a cartoonist.

Dr. Carolina Robertson, Ethnomusicology, School of Music, University of Maryland
Dr. Robertson has a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology and anthropology focusing on African and Native American performance traditions. Since 1979 she has coordinated Graduate Studies in Ethnomusicology at the University of Maryland and has taught at Columbia University, the Tuskeegee Institute, and the National Institute of Anthropology of Argentina. As a consultant, she continually advises the Smithsonian, the Mountain Institute, and the National Endowment for the Arts and has served as President of the Society for Ethnomusicology. Dr. Robertson has conducted field research in Ghana, Burkina Faso, Andean Argentina and Chile, and Polynesia. Her numerous publications in English and Spanish emphasize the relationships between social and musical structures, shamanic practices, music and ritual, and the impact of sound on physiology. Her edited and co-authored volumes include Musical Repercussions of 1492 focusing on the impact of colonialism on musical practice, Fact and Value in Musical Scholarship dealing with post-modern reconsiderations of musical analysis, and "Indigenous Music of Latin America" on the politics of music ethnography.

Joyce J. Scott, Visual & Performance Artist, Baltimore, Maryland
Ms. Scott received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Art Education from Maryland Institute, College of Art in 1970. Then she moved to Mexico to study at the Institute Allende, San Miguel Allende, where she earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in Crafts. Scott has studied the art of Native Americans, West Africans, and Central American Cuna Indians. Her work is additionally influenced by her appreciation of Japanese theater, East European decorative arts, the beadwork of the peoples of Africa, and American popular culture. This wide range of influences plays a crucial role in her interpretation of contemporary issues such as racism and violence, sexism and stereotypes. In addition to teaching and lecturing nationally and internationally, Scott has received wide acclaim as a performance artist. While living in Mexico, Ms. Scott supported herself by singing at local nightclub. She is most recognized for her work in the satirical Thunder Thigh Revue with collaborator Kay Lawall, which had its beginnings at Baltimore's Theatre Project and took the Edinburgh Festival by storm in the early 1980s. Part of the Baltimore Museum of Art's collection since 1984, Scott's work has appeared in more than 60 solo and group exhibitions at numerous museums across the country and internationally, including the American Craft Museum, New York; The Baltimore Museum of Art, Maryland; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; the Orlando Art Museum, Florida; the Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; The Studio Museum, Harlem, New York; and the Taft Museum, Cincinnati, Ohio. She has been awarded honors from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, the Maryland State Arts Council, and Anonymous was a Woman.

Al Smith, Department of Art, Howard University
Al Smith holds a BFA and MFA from Boston University's College of Fine Arts and a Masters in Digital Arts with a concentration in 3D Animation from Maryland Institute College of Art. He seeks a synthesis of aesthetics between Western harmony and Eastern rhythm that he describes as a visual "Jazz Aesthetic." He conceptualizes calligraphic paintings and sculptural elements as permutations on a theme and visual voices, creating as a final product the improvised spatial play of polyrhythmic interwoven elements. He envisions further developing 3D Animations as a visual instrument that allows him to play time and space with musicians. As a leader and member of an audio-visual band, he extends his use of animated calligraphic figures, projecting them onto and through space warp such as domes, walls, and corridors. Mr. Smith's recent exhibitions include: Seeing Jazz (Smithsonian International gallery and traveling national museum tour, 1997-99), TransAtlantic Dialogue (Ackland Museum; University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution; and the DeSalvo Museum, Chicago; from Fall 1999-Spring 2001).

Dr. Marilyn Stewart, Professor of Art Education, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania
Dr. Marilyn Stewart is recent past Chair of Related Arts at Kutztown University where she teaches courses in art criticism, aesthetics, and art education in the undergraduate and graduate programs. A past Visiting Scholar with the Getty Education Institute for the Arts, Dr. Stewart is known for her ability to translate difficult theoretical concepts in arts education into practical, inquiry-based activities for the classroom. She has worked with numerous national projects involving curriculum development for K-12 comprehensive arts education, including projects with the College Board, the Annenberg Foundation, the Getty Institute for Education in the Arts, and the Milken Foundation. Dr. Stewart is the author of Thinking through Aesthetics and field editor of the Art Education in Practice series, both published by Davis Publications, Worcester, MA. With her colleague, Dr. Eldon Katter, President of the National Art Education Association, she has recently completed two of three volumes of Art and the Human Experience, a middle school textbook program, also published by Davis Publications.

Dr. Paul Traver, Professor Emeritus, School of Music, University of Maryland
Dr. Traver is the founder and retired director of the University of Maryland Chorus, and the founder and artistic director of the Maryland Handel Festival. He has made appearances as a conductor worldwide, with the National Symphony Orchestra, the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra, the Richmond Symphony, and the Annapolis Symphony Orchestra. He conducts a repertoire of music which spans the 9th through the 20th centuries, performing major choral works at the Halle Handel Festival, Germany; the Mozarteum Orchestra, Salzburg; and in London, Moscow, Rome, Vienna, and Istanbul. In 1985, Dr. Traver was named Distinguished Scholar Teacher, University of Maryland, and recipient of the first President's medal, the highest honor the University confers.

Tony Tsendeas, Actor, Director and Teacher, Baltimore, Maryland
Tony Tsendeas' work Tony Tsendeas' work as an actor, director and writer has received critical acclaim both in the US and Europe. He is the Artistic Director of Action Theater, a Baltimore based professional touring theater (www.actiontheater.org). Tony also is a member of the faculty of the Baltimore School For the Arts, where he teaches acting. His Arts in education experience includes authoring the Baltimore City Middle School Theater Curriculum. In 1998 Tony was nominated as best actor in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival by Stage Magazine for his performance in BeckettLand, which he also directed. BeckettLand, a collection of short plays by Samuel Beckett set in a "Ghost carnival" or "bemusement park" received five star reviews and attracted European booking representation for Action Theater. Acting credits include Gary Swirn in "Homicide: Life on the Streets," Voice over work for The Discovery Channel, Training and independent films and a large number of stage performances. Directing Credits include over 25 professional productions of original material and works by authors such as Samuel Beckett, Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, David Mamet, Peter Barnes, Edward Albee and Ring Lardner Jr. Tony is also a recipient of the Maryland State Arts Council Playwriting award for his play The Adventures of Felix.

Chris Vadala, Coordinator of Jazz Studies, School of Music, University of Maryland
One of the country's foremost woodwind artists, Chris Vidala is in demand as a jazz and classical performer and educator. He has appeared on more than ninety recordings as well as numerous film and television scores, performing the saxophone, flute, and clarinet. He has a BFA in Music Education and an MA in clarinet. Currently, Mr. Vadala is Director of Jazz Studies and Professor of Saxophone at the University of Maryland after having held several academic appointments. He serves as President of the Maryland Unit of the International Association of Jazz Educators and was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Study grant. He has published several original compositions and arrangements, authored many magazine articles, and currently writes a column that appears in Saxophone Journal. As a distinguished clinician, Mr. Vadala travels worldwide, performing with and conducting student and professional jazz ensembles, symphonic bands, and orchestras. Within the past few years, he has appeared at over 200 high schools and colleges throughout the country.

Dr. Sydney Walker, Associate Professor, Art Education, The Ohio State University
Dr. Walker teaches about contemporary art, art criticism, and studio production. Her publications on teaching and art criticism are found in the anthology Lessons for Teaching Art Criticism, School Arts, Arts Policy Review, and Studies in Art Education. Postmodern theory informs her research about teaching art criticism and her chapter, "Postmodern Theory: Why Bother?", is in the anthology Art Education: Content and Practice in a Postmodern Era. Her book, Meaningmaking as Artmaking, will be published this fall by Davis Publications. Currently, her work with curriculum includes serving as faculty coordinator at Ohio State for the national Getty-Annenburg Challenge project, Transforming Education Through the Arts Challenge, and consulting with the Virginia Beach City Schools and Nebraska Arts Council.

   
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The Center for Renaissance & Baroque Studies
0139 Taliaferro Hall
The University of Maryland
College Park, Maryland 20742
301-405-6830
Last updated June 11, 2007