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Notable: Daniel Schlosberg

Fall 2018

By Magazine Staff

Daniel Schlosberg ’00 BA, ’00 BMUS (Peab), ’01 MMUS (Peab) is a Grammy-nominated pianist who has performed throughout the U.S. He has been teaching at the University of Notre Dame since 2005.

Career Highlights

Nominated for a GRAMMY Award for Best Classical Solo Vocal Album for 40@40, with soprano Laura Strickling MM ’06 (Peab), with contributions from Joseph Jones MM ’05 (Peab) and Caitlin Vincent MM ’09 (Peab).
Appeared with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as a featured soloist and in numerous chamber music concerts.
Has a passion for contemporary music, collaborating frequently with Eighth Blackbird and Third Coast Percussion.
Gave the world premiere of Augusta Read Thomas’ “Starlight Ribbons” for solo piano; the U.S. premiere of Kaija Saariaho’s “Calices” (for violin and piano); and several sets of piano pieces by Stanley Walden.
Was a founding member of Yarn/Wire, the lauded musical ensemble.
Recorded for the Albany, Bridge, Centaur, New World, Nimbus, Jacaranda Live!, and Permelia labels.
Latest solo release is “Gaul Me Maybe: French Baroque Keyboard Music,” consisting of works by Royer, Rameau, d’Anglebert, and Bach.
In the art song realm, Schlosberg was on staff at the Ravinia Steans Music Institute vocal program, and he is the director of the Baltimore Lieder Weekend, held each October.
Other recent projects include performing Mahler/ Zemlinsky: Symphony No 6 (arr. 4-hands) at the Ravinia Festival and the National Gallery of Art, D.C., and multiple appearances at Bargemusic in Brooklyn, New York.

Quoted

The idea [behind the 40@40 album] was to have a lot of different voices to foster this sense of community that Laura and I both feel is essential to the genre. [Music is] a way of commenting on the way we’re feeling, what’s going on in society, and many things. It expresses ideas and emotions that are hard to express, complicated, or abstract.”
abc57, February 1, 2024

With the art-song genre—text and music—I want them to see how composers navigate and interpret the text they’ve been working with and the subtlety and intricacy that is involved. And I want them to be excited about art song and explore it further with other artists, composers, and time periods.”
University of Notre Dame (College of Arts & Letters-Latest News),
December 7, 2023

Equality in Education and Health Care

Fall 2018

For Amy Li, a sophomore majoring in public health studies, her fascinations with equality and policy were apparent as soon as she arrived on campus in August 2022. She promptly became involved in student government, currently serving as secretary of the Student Government Association, and successfully applied as one of only four Sheridan Libraries Special Collections First-Year Fellows.

This academic fellowship introduces students to conducting research based on archival materials, such as rare books and manuscripts available at the Sheridan Libraries. “I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to work in archives, especially just in my freshman year,” says Li.

Finding a starting place

For her research topic, she chose student life and focused on the coeducation debate that dated back to the founding of Johns Hopkins in 1876. Li’s mentor, Katie Carey, the Hodson Curator of the University Archives, introduced her to a 1986 book, Women at the Johns Hopkins University: A History, written by Julia B. Morgan, the very first university archivist at Johns Hopkins. “That book really inspired me, providing a unique perspective on Hopkins that I hadn’t considered before,” says Li.

From that starting point, Li delved into the long discourse among university administrators and their peers throughout higher education in the United States on how to integrate women with historically male-centric institutions. Motivated in part by efforts to expand humanities studies and the overall cultural zeitgeist, the debate culminated in women finally being allowed to attend Johns Hopkins as undergraduates in 1970.

“It was a huge shift in university history,” says Li. Administrators had to consider not only technical reforms, for instance in student housing accommodations and athletic programs, but more profoundly in social reforms, through newly inclusive curricula and campus culture.

Creating new archives

With these findings, Li created an online library archive at Johns Hopkins focused on coeducation and equality in student life, further encompassing women’s health and the experiences of women of color as the coeducation movement swept American universities.

This broader progress toward equality in education that Li studied has dovetailed with her interests in addressing modern disparities in health care. After college, Li accordingly plans to attend medical school and help continue bringing about positive change.

“My experience at Hopkins has inspired me to pursue medicine,” says Li, “but also research and advocacy to make sure all voices are heard in different parts of the community.”

Taking the Guesswork Out of Retirement

Fall 2018

As Jerry Doctrow ’72 approached retirement, he considered himself better prepared than most, with years of experience as an analyst and investment banker who followed senior housing and care, as well as health care real estate. Yet he wanted objective information to help him make important decisions about where and how to live in this next stage of his life.

Online, he mostly found blogs written by retirees, and advertisements for retirement communities and commission-based senior housing placement services.

He didn’t see what he wanted, so in 2015, the year he retired at age 65 from Stifel Financial, Doctrow started his own blog, Robust Retirement. The goal, he says, is to help people understand their retirement-years options, particularly related to housing. He also writes about medical care, exercise, and his own experiences managing Parkinson’s disease.

As we spoke, Doctrow, 73, and his wife, Carol, were gearing up to move out of their condominium a few blocks north of the Homewood campus, where they had lived for 18 years, and into an apartment at Roland Park Place, a community that combines senior living and continuing care on a single campus.

What do you want people to know as they plan for their retirement?

I want them to be realistic about what their needs are going to be down the road. Most people are going to have 20 or more years of retirement, and it’s going to vary a lot. You may be healthy and active when you retire, even working part time, but chances are you’ll need medical and supportive care at some point.

If you could give one piece of advice to retirees, what would it be?

Maintain social interaction. I think people underestimate the importance of social interaction, particularly if they outlive their spouse. I see a lot of people who hang on to their houses, and it can be isolating, compared to opportunities to socialize in senior housing. It’s OK when you’re driving and your friends are driving, but as you get older, you wind up spending more time alone at home.

During the pandemic, my wife and I each reconnected with five to 10 longtime friends that we had known since elementary school or junior high, but with whom we had infrequent contact over the years. We established a monthly call in my case and a weekly call in her case to discuss our lives with people we know very well.

Has your research for this blog influenced your own retirement decisions?

I think one of the things that surprised us was the satisfaction that people find in a retirement community. We had downsized to a full-service three-bedroom, three-bathroom condo and were comfortable there. Our decision to move to a retirement community was driven by our health care needs, but also seeing the benefits of on-site health care, fitness, educational and entertainment programs, and the reduced demands on family caregivers.

What do you see as the goal of Robust Retirement?

I was never trying to make money on the blog. It’s a way for me to do research and comment in an objective manner on issues important to me and to friends who are aging with me.

Prime Picks for Sips and Hangouts

Fall 2018

By Magazine Staff

What’s college life without a few go-to spots to study and socialize? We asked students about their top hangouts and favorite sips.

panoramic shot of Piccola Café with view of Gilman Atrium

top view of glass of iced green tea on metal table

two students entering Good Neighbor Café

Top Campus Spots

Brody Learning Commons
Café at Mudd Hall
Piccola Allora coffee shop/Gilman Atrium
Levering Café

Nearby

Café Fili, Mt. Vernon
Pure Raw Juice, Rotunda, Hampden
Good Neighbor, Hampden

Favorite Sips

Boba
Cappuccino
Caramel macchiato
Coffee
Dirty chai
Hot chocolate
Iced Americano
Iced coffee, overcaffeinated iced coffee
Mango juice
Matcha, iced matcha latte, matcha tonic
Tropical smoothie
Tea (iced, hot)
Shirley Temple

Underwriting Souls with Alexandre White

Fall 2018

The clause is among the surprising details uncovered in Underwriting Souls, a public, digitized archive and collection of exhibits related to the history and role of insurance in making the transatlantic slave trade possible. Developed by sociologist and historian Alexandre White, the archive was assembled from documents and objects from the collection of Lloyd’s, a London-based insurance market that was active during the legalized British slave trade.

“We gain something from taking seriously these seemingly dry financial archives,” says White, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology. “What they tell us are both stories of dispossession and oppression, but also stories of resistance to slavery, stories of Africans challenging and confronting enslavement.”

Scrawled on the battered parchment of a document outlining policies for the Guipuzcoa, a slave ship traveling from Liverpool to the African coast and Cuba, are the words, “Free from particular average by insurrection under 5 per cent.” In the dispassionate financial language of an insurance policy, the clause notes how much the Guipuzcoa’s underwriters would cover in damages to the ship or loss of value in enslaved people—each individually insured for 45 British pounds—due to their deaths in an insurrection.

Detail of a 1794 Lloyd’s insurance policy for the ship Guipuzcoa. — *Detail of a 1794 Lloyd’s insurance policy for the ship* Guipuzcoa. The dehumanization of enslaved individuals is evident as they are referred to as mere “goods,” each valued at £45.
Source: underwritingsouls.org/digitized-corpus/slave-ship-policies-for-the-guipuzcoa

Uncovering new truths

After Lloyd’s issued a formal apology in 2020 for its role in the transatlantic slave trade, White secured funding from Black Beyond Data (a JHU research project analyzing data to uncover new truths about Black history) and approached the insurance market about collaborating to digitize its related materials. White and graduate student co-lead Pyar Seth took several research trips to the United Kingdom to learn more about the materials—and the people and ships detailed within.

Along with revealing a wide and sophisticated business network of slave ship owners and underwriters, White and Seth also found that many of the key individuals named in the archive’s documents had personal experience with slavery. They owned plantations and slave ships, and sometimes captained voyages. The owner of one of the archive’s two risk books, each documenting dozens of slaving voyages, was born in Prince George’s County, Maryland, ran a tobacco brokerage with his brother, and, according to census data, lived on a property owned by his brother with more than a dozen enslaved people.

“The business of insurance was, for many of these men, part of a much larger set of business empires organized around the enslaving of people and the profiting from the products that they produce,” White says.

What [the archives] tell us are both stories of dispossession and oppression, but also stories of resistance to slavery, stories of Africans challenging and confronting enslavement.”
—Alexandre White

Underwriting Souls includes several insurance agreements and two full insurance agreements pertaining to a slaving ship as well as two risk books documenting dozens of slaving voyages. Also included are photographs of related objects, such as an ornate, trophy-like silver cup and cover that was gifted by Lloyd’s underwriters to a slaving ship captain for protecting his ship from French privateers. (Lloyd’s had no financial involvement or editorial authority in the Underwriting Souls project, White says. All materials were independently peer reviewed.)

The exhibit also features Uprising & Resistance, a volume of poetry and art by Black writers and artists as a response and counterpoint to the distressing and violent material documented in the archive. “Underwriting Souls attempts to speak to the practices of dehumanization that are occurring in the process of insuring slaving voyages,” White says. “What’s being underwritten are not just ships and cargo, but living, breathing people who are enslaved.”

Diagnosing Party Politics, and a Way Forward

Fall 2018

Political scientist Daniel Schlozman says our nation’s two political parties today are paralyzed by a combination of frenzied activity yet incapacity to bring together diverse interests in a common project; seemingly strong from the outside, but empty inside.

“All we see out there is bitter partisan division, and formal parties and paraparty groups around them engaged in all sorts of activity, and yet parties can’t seem to organize themselves into presences that are able to organize all of that political conflict,” says Schlozman, the Joseph and Bertha Bernstein Associate Professor and director of graduate studies in the Department of Political Science.

A deep dive into history

Schlozman’s new book, The Hollow Parties: The Many Pasts and Disordered Present of American Party Politics, co-authored with Sam Rosenfeld, an associate professor of political science at Colgate University in New York, is not an indictment of the two-party system. Rather, it is a deep dive into the histories of the parties; their triumphs and shortcomings, various stages of evolution, growth, and stagnation; and what the authors view as a path forward.

“As a civic presence in an era of nationalized politics, hollow parties are unrooted in communities and unfelt in ordinary people’s day-to-day lives,” the authors write. “Organizationally, they tilt toward national entities at the expense of state and local ones. Swarming networks of unattached paraparty groups, devoid of popular accountability, overshadow formal party organizations at all levels.” (Paraparty groups refer to nonprofits, think tanks, media companies, and fundraising groups.)

Schlozman, trained in political science, and Rosenfeld, trained in history, joined forces to cover topics including the rise of party politics in America, the early days of the Republican party, party responses to industrialism, the New Deal, and how the right “broke American party politics,” as well as the recent histories of both parties.

Strong parties

The chapter on the Republican Party’s founding from 1854 through 1877 showcases a strong party—a party that wins the Civil War, frees enslaved people, and passes the Reconstruction Amendments.

“This is a party that was in every way doing the hyper-political stuff we associate with 19th-century politics, but at the same time acted in service to a grand vision that reoriented and redeemed the promise of American democracy,” Schlozman says.

He also points to models for liberalism—times during which liberals looking to rejuvenate state Democratic Parties work in partnership with labor and civil rights—but notes that these examples are more specific and less overarching.

What is the path forward? Simply put, the authors suggest the parties emphasize civic engagement, connecting to people’s everyday lives, and connecting ordinary people to each other.

According to Schlozman and Rosenfeld, getting there will require “repeated and substantial electoral losses” to rebuke the extremist elements in the Republican Party, and for Democrats, building a big-tent party across many civic dimensions.

“The goal of the book was to try to capture all of that variety, but also to suggest that in that big fun mess are the answers to some of our democratic discontents,” Schlozman says. “There is something in there that may be of use to democracy.”

Bringing Asian American History to Life

Fall 2018

By Magazine Staff

Fight to Belong graphic novel by Alex Chang

Krieger School sophomore Alexander Chang co-wrote the recently released Fighting to Belong, a graphic novel about Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) history in the United States. It’s the first in a series of three graphic novels, and covers key AANHPI history from the 1700s to the 1800s.

The idea for Fighting to Belong was a response to a rise in anti-Asian sentiment during the COVID pandemic, conceived in collaboration with the Asian American Foundation. Chang and his co-writer Amy Chu (who is also his mother and a comic book writer) referenced curriculum from the Asian American Education Project to build out the story. The result is a graphic novel that highlights AANHPI contributions to American society.

History that isn’t taught

Chang is a third-generation Chinese American, but he did not know most of the history in the graphic novel before he started writing. The goal for the graphic novel is to fill that omission in middle and high-school curriculums. “There are so many other students like me who do not know about these events,” he says. “They deserve to know it, especially if they don’t feel represented enough within American history.”

Chang and his co-writer took this curriculum, formed a story, and set the scene of the graphic novel. Four students—Sammy, Tiana, Joe, and Padmini—take a museum field trip that turns magical. They time travel to 18th-century Louisiana and shrimp dance with the Manilamen, Filipino indentured servants who escaped Spanish ships and are considered the oldest AAPI community in America. The children also dodge explosions with Chinese railroad workers, learn about immigration laws and race riots, and watch native Hawaiians fight for workers’ rights.

There are so many other students like me who do not know about the history of these events. They deserve to know it, especially if they don’t feel represented enough within American history.”
—Alex Chang ’26

A love of graphic novels

This is not Chang’s first graphic novel. He has edited and proofread his mother’s scripts since middle school, gradually taking on more responsibility with each project. The duo started working on volume one in 2021, the summer before his senior year of high school. He’s working on the second and third volumes of Fighting to Belong while completing a double major in English and environmental studies and a minor in The Writing Seminars. Chang has always loved graphic novels himself, and is hopeful that together, the organizations behind the graphic novel will be able to get it into schools and get students and teachers interested in this history.

“When I was a kid, I would spend so much time in the library reading graphic novels,” he says. “By adapting it into this format, we’re hoping the content will interest readers enough to want to learn more.”

The next two volumes of Fighting to Belong will be published in September 2024 and January 2025 by Third State Books.

Institute for Planetary Health Aims to Address Today’s Earth Crisis

Fall 2018

By Magazine Staff

What does human health have to do with the health of the planet? A lot, says Sam Myers, a renowned expert in public health and medicine charged with leading the new Johns Hopkins Institute for Planetary Health (JHIPH).

“The health of the planet is not good,” Myers says. “In pursuit of our ambitions, all of nature has become collateral damage.”

Planetary health is a relatively new and rapidly expanding field, but it provides a useful framework for understanding—and transforming—our relationship with the planet we inhabit. Though climate change is among its concerns, the field explores more broadly how human activity is altering natural systems and contributing to what Myers calls an Earth crisis—a complex, intertangled web of environmental challenges that include air, water, and soil pollution on a global scale; marine system degradation; and accelerating declines in biodiversity. And that Earth crisis, he says, is now fueling a global health and humanitarian crisis.

Myers joined Johns Hopkins last year as a professor in the university’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. He comes to Hopkins from Harvard along with Marie Studer, the institute’s executive director; here they hope to cultivate planetary health scholarship, policy, and practice across JHU’s nine academic divisions while positioning the university as a global planetary health leader. The institute will include the Planetary Health Alliance, a backbone organization for a global community of planetary health practitioners with more than 420 member universities, NGOs, and other organizations in more than 70 countries. As the world’s first cross-university institute of planetary health, the JHIPH is uniquely positioned to work across the university and tap into existing expertise.

“The Institute for Planetary Health at Johns Hopkins could not be timelier and more necessary. I am delighted to welcome Sam Myers, a renowned leader in the field, to Hopkins, and especially honored to be partnering with Dean Ellen MacKenzie and our esteemed Bloomberg School of Public Health,” said Christopher S. Celenza, James B. Knapp Dean of the Krieger School.

Hopkins Semester Gives Hopkins Students Gateway to DC

Fall 2018

students in discussion at outdoor table at the Hopkins Bloomberg Center, U.S. Capitol in view in the background

A view of the class in session through the exterior pane glass.

a view over student's shoulder of professor lecturing

side view of three students - one raising hand

alum mentor with two students looking at laptop

Former Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulki fist bumps with student.

Sophomore Isabelle Jouve dreams of pursuing a career on Capitol Hill. As a public health studies major, she’s spent the past year and a half studying health policy in hopes of someday building a career in Washington, D.C.

Now, thanks to the first-ever Hopkins Semester D.C., Jouve is getting a head start.

“They’re offering a really unique chance for students to live and work in D.C.,” she says. “I get to do something that I dreamed of doing after graduation while I’m still in undergrad.”

The Hopkins Semester D.C. is a new study-abroad alternative that brings Hopkins undergraduates to the heart of the nation’s capital. Open to all students pursuing a major or minor in the Krieger School, it offers a variety of learning opportunities both in the classroom and in the field.

The program, which launched this spring semester, is hosted in the new Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center at 555 Pennsylvania Ave NW. Situated blocks from the U.S. capitol, the building contains programming from all Hopkins divisions, allowing students, researchers, and faculty to collaborate in new and exciting ways.

“With Hopkins consolidating our spaces in D.C., it was time to connect the undergrads,” explains Lauren Reynolds ’17 PhD, director of the Hopkins Semester D.C. program.

The Hopkins Semester’s inaugural cohort was made up of 15 undergraduates. In addition to regular classes, all HSDC students ended the semester with internship and independent research experience, as well as new networking connections.

Students aren’t limited to internships on the Hill; some spend their semesters with lobbying groups, federal agencies, and nonprofits. When mixed with the countless options for independent research, this means that no two students will have quite the same experience.

HSDC students also attend weekly talks with politicians and policy experts. These sessions allow the undergraduates to consider alternate career paths and learn more about the many roles that contribute to the D.C. policy scene. To help navigate these experiences, each student is paired with an alumni mentor from their intended career field.

The spring semester’s HSDC classes all fell under the theme of “Global Affairs and Policy.” Fall 2024 will feature two themes, “Humanities in the Public Sphere” and “The Modern American Presidential Election in Historical Perspective.” Both themes will incorporate aspects of the 2024 presidential election, taking full advantage of the program’s location.

From the Krieger School Dean

Fall 2018

After an unusually chilly and rainy few weeks, spring is now evident on the Homewood campus, and it does not disappoint. Trees, flowers, and bushes are bursting forth with bright color; our expert landscapers are getting rid of the last vestiges of winter; and students are gathering to study for final exams. But perhaps the best place to witness the abundance of spring in our area is about 40 miles south, in Washington, D.C. That’s where, every year in March and April, thousands of cherry blossom trees erupt in canopies of pink, attracting people from all over the world to witness the floral display.

This spring in Washington, D.C., has been particularly meaningful to our university, as it is the first one to witness a major Johns Hopkins presence. Last fall, the Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg Center opened its doors at 555 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, situated at the crossroads of the branches of the federal government. The building’s primary tenant is JHU’s School of Advanced International Studies, but I am proud to say that the Krieger School has a noteworthy presence in the building and beyond. Besides being home to many of our Advanced Academic Programs, the Bloomberg Center is also a focal point for initiatives such as the Hopkins Semester D.C. and Humanities on the Mall, a series that invites noted authors to be interviewed about their work.

It is important for our students to have a front-row seat to the inner workings of our nation’s government. After all, they are going to be tomorrow’s policy makers and change agents, working to make a difference in our world.

It is equally important that our faculty expertise in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences be evident in D.C., where others can learn about the impact of our work. For example, in April, the Bloomberg Center sponsored a briefing with three of our professors from the departments of Earth & Planetary Sciences and Physics & Astronomy, talking about the recent solar eclipse, the science behind it, and the elements that made it such an amazing experience for millions of people.

Our faculty and staff are dedicated not just to discovery and creating new knowledge, but to sharing their innovations with the world. The university’s presence in our nation’s capital will enable them to expand our reach and impact even more. And if you happen to be in Washington, D.C., I encourage you to visit our striking new space on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Christopher S. Celenza
James B. Knapp Dean

And…ACTION! Hopkins in L.A.

Fall 2018

By Magazine Staff

It’s every aspiring filmmaker’s dream—to be in Hollywood networking with producers, directors, screenwriters, and others in the industry.

For 10 Krieger School seniors, that dream came true in January. Every year during Intersession, a group of undergraduate students from the Program in Film and Media Studies travels to Los Angeles for five long but exciting days meeting with studio executives, television writers, agents, and other professionals. This year the group met with executives from Warner, Disney, DreamWorks, CBS Studio Center, and Sony. They also visited JHU alumni working at AppleTV, HartBeat, Netflix, and other production companies. Linda DeLibero, special advocate for alumni and outreach, explains that the trip enables students to make valuable contacts and learn about the industry.

Group shot of students and alum Mark Swift ’93 in front of water tower at Warner Brothers studion in Los Angeles, California. — Photo: Will Kirk

Photo caption: (l-r) Indi Aufranc, Mark Swift ’93, Isabel Salas, Mia DeAngelo, Sophia Lin, Devin Andrada, Annie Radin, Cierra Gladden, Anne Flemming, John D’cruz, Elaine Lu Qu.

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Notable: Daniel Schlosberg

Career Highlights

Quoted

Prime Picks for Sips and Hangouts

Top Campus Spots

Nearby

Favorite Sips

Bringing Asian American History to Life

History that isn’t taught

A love of graphic novels

Institute for Planetary Health Aims to Address Today’s Earth Crisis

From the Krieger School Dean

And…ACTION! Hopkins in L.A.