Public anger at the government is much bigger than in any earlier crises, and the anger could grow when the economic fallout of the epidemic fully unfolds. One thing for sure is that the social stability contract that has worked for so long—that the people tolerate the authoritarian rule so far as the government warrants economic prosperity and provides good governance—is broken in a big way.
Seen & Heard: Yascha Mounk
Our moral instincts have not been honed to guide us well in this extraordinary crisis. All of us are having trouble adjusting to a world in which leaving our own house for frivolous reasons carries the risk of manslaughter.
Seen & Heard: Emily Fisher
If you’re trying to introduce students to an authentic research environment, then the chaos of real research is part of that. Researchers don’t just pipette all day. They do a lot of thinking.
Seen & Heard: Joel Schildbach
We are trying to make sure that the core of the experience is preserved and that is the interaction between the scholar and the student.
Faculty Awards
Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, by Jane Bennett, Andrew W. Mellon Professor in Humanities, Department of Political Science, was named a book of the decade by Duke University Press.
Emanuele Berti, Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, was selected to present the annual Buhl Lecture at Carnegie Mellon University.
Danielle Evans, Assistant Professor, The Writing Seminars, has been awarded a creative writing fellowship in prose by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Mary Favret, Professor, Department of English, was awarded the Keats-Shelley Distinguished Scholar Award from the Modern Language Association in recognition of her “career-long excellence in scholarship” of the Romantic period.
Karen Fleming, Professor, Department of Biophysics, was selected as a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar for the 2020-21 academic year. Scholars typically travel to more than 100 colleges and universities, spending two days on each campus.
Rigoberto Hernandez, Gompf Family Professor of Chemistry, was named a Fellow in the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Sarah Hörst, Assistant Professor, Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, was awarded the 2020 Early Career Award from the Laboratory Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society.
“Markup Bodies,” by Jessica Johnson, Assistant Professor, Department of History, was named one of Duke University Press’s top 10 most read articles of 2019.
Martha S. Jones, Society of Black Alumni Presidential Professor and Professor of History, won the 2019 American Historical Association’s Littleton-Griswold Prize in U.S. law and society for her book Birthright Citizens: A History of Race and Rights in Antebellum America. In addition, Jones’ All Bound Up Together: The Woman Question in African American Public Culture, 1830-1900 was named to ZORA magazine’s list of the 100 greatest books ever written by African American women.
The American Astronomical Society announced its first class of AAS Fellows, including the Department of Physics and Astronomy’s Marc Kamionkowski, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor; Adam Riess, Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, Thomas J. Barber Professor of Physics and Astronomy, and Krieger Eisenhower Professor of Physics and Astronomy; Joseph Silk, Research Professor and Homewood Professor of Physics and Astronomy; and Rosemary Wyse, Alumni Centennial Professor.
Mitchell B. Merback, Department of the History of Art, was named the inaugural Arnell and Everett Land Professor in February.
Chikako Mese, Professor, Department of Mathematics, was named a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society for her contributions to the theory of harmonic maps and their applications, and her service to the mathematical community.
Colin Norman, Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, was selected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a lifetime distinction that recognizes outstanding contributions to science and technology.
Anand Pandian, Professor, Department of Anthropology, is the recipient of the 2019 Infosys Prize in the Social Sciences in recognition of his “brilliantly imaginative work on ethics, selfhood and the creative process.”
Lawrence M. Principe, Drew Professor of the Humanities; Director, Department of History of Science and Technology, was awarded the HIST Award of the History of Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society. The international award recognizes outstanding achievement in the history of chemistry.
Emily Riehl, Associate Professor, Department of Mathematics, was awarded the university’s $250,000 President’s Frontier Award for her work in category theory.
V. Sara Thoi, Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry, was awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER award to study the redox behavior of metal-organic frameworks for energy storage devices. She was also selected for the Women in Engineering Program at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.
Christy Thornton, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, was appointed Fellow at the Quincy Institute.
David Yarkony, Chair and D. Mead Johnson Professor of Chemistry, received the American Chemical Society’s 2020 award in theoretical chemistry for his work “demonstrating the significance and properties of conical intersections of two or more adiabatic electronic states.”
In Memoriam
Stephen Dixon, professor emeritus
Stephen Dixon, a prolific powerhouse of an author and retired professor in The Writing Seminars, died in November 2019. He was 83.
Known for developing very human characters while experimenting with various forms of storytelling, Dixon wrote 17 novels and more than 500 short stories, several of which were adapted into film. A popular teacher, he was generous with his time and his feedback, influencing countless successful writers during his 26 years on the faculty. His critiques were thoughtful and extensive, rooted in his belief that every piece had groundbreaking potential.
Dixon was the winner of four O. Henry Awards for fiction, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, two Pushcart Prizes, the American Academy Institute of Arts and Letters Prize for Fiction, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was twice a National Book Award finalist and was also a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1958 from City College of New York in international relations, and then took a job as a radio reporter in Washington, D.C., where he began writing fiction on a whim. He went on to work as a schoolteacher, artist’s model, cabdriver, salesclerk, and bartender, among other jobs, continuing to publish stories and, in 1976, his first novel. In 1980, Writing Seminars chair John Irwin hired Dixon as assistant professor. He was named professor in 1989 and retired from the position in 2007.
John Irwin, professor emeritus
John Irwin, a celebrated poet, critic, teacher, and editor who spent more than four decades at Johns Hopkins, died in December 2019. He was 79.
Decker Professor in the Humanities emeritus, Irwin was the author of several works of literary criticism and three volumes of poetry, sometimes under the pseudonym John Bricuth. He was editor of The Johns Hopkins Review from its rebirth in 2008 until 2015 and chair of the Writing Seminars for nearly 20 years. He retired from teaching in 2016.
Irwin earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, in 1962, and went on to earn a master’s degree and PhD, also in English, from Rice University. He arrived at Johns Hopkins as assistant professor of English in 1970, leaving in 1974 to become editor of The Georgia Review at the University of Georgia. He returned to Hopkins in 1977 to become professor and chair of The Writing Seminars, and accepted a joint appointment in the English Department and an endowed chair, the Decker Professorship in the Humanities, in 1984.
He was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and received the Helen C. Smith Memorial Award from the Texas Institute of Letters for the best book of poetry published by a Texas native or resident; the Christian Gauss Prize from Phi Beta Kappa for the best book in the humanities; the Scaglione Prize from the Modern Language Association of America for the best book in comparative literary studies; a Guggenheim Fellowship; and a Danforth Fellowship.
Yung Keun Lee ’56, professor emeritus
Yung Keun Lee, a professor emeritus in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, died in September 2019. He was 90.
A specialist in experimental nuclear physics, Lee was a member of the department from 1964 until he retired in 2004. Widely known for his innovations in instrumentation and technique, Lee developed, among other instruments, the Compton polarimeter for the identification of nuclear energy levels, which was used successfully in a series of atom-smasher measurements of medium-mass isotopes.
Described by his colleagues as courteous and gentlemanly, Lee was fluent in five languages, played golf, and enjoyed traveling and working on home projects.
Lee was born in Seoul, Korea. He emigrated to the U.S. when he received a scholarship to attend Johns Hopkins, graduating Phi Beta Kappa in 1956. He earned a master’s degree in physics from the University of Chicago in 1957 and a PhD from Columbia in 1961.
Lee returned to Hopkins in 1964 as assistant professor, became associate professor in 1967, and was named professor in 1971. He held visiting positions at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1971 and the Institut des Sciences Nucleaires in Grenoble, France, in 1975. He served as a consultant in nuclear disarmament projects to the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory from 1988 to 1990 and collaborated with the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory beginning in 1998.
James Taylor, professor
James Taylor, Ralph S. O’Connor Professor of Biology and Professor of Computer Science, died in April 2020. He was 40.
A trailblazer in computational biology and genomics research, Taylor made an impact as a scientist, teacher, and colleague, with appointments in the Krieger School as well as the Whiting School of Engineering. He helped develop the Galaxy platform for data analysis and worked with members of his lab to extend the platform to make large-scale computational analysis more accessible and reproducible. His research focused on understanding genomic and epigenomic regulation of gene transcription through integrated analysis, with the goal of achieving a complete understanding of the structure and function of genomes. He also developed a strategy to support the health of the Chesapeake Bay by detecting microorganisms in the Baltimore Harbor and monitoring their levels continuously using newly developed, portable, and rapid DNA sequencing technologies.
Vince Hilser, chair of the Biology Department, described Taylor as a bedrock of the department. Taylor helped other faculty members uncover new insights by revealing similarities between the proteins they were studying and those in other organisms.
“He came in 2014, and it was transformational,” Hilser says. “He was this catalyst for change, with a huge positive impact.”
Taylor earned his BS in computer science from the University of Vermont in 2000 and his PhD in computer science in 2006 from Penn State University, where he was involved in several vertebrate genome projects and the ENCODE project. Before arriving at Johns Hopkins, he was an associate professor in the departments of biology and mathematics and computer science at Emory University from 2008 until 2013.
He is survived by his wife, Meredith Greif, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology.
New Associate Dean Named
The Krieger School of Arts and Sciences named Rachel Hitchcock as its new associate dean for external affairs.
Hitchcock was most recently senior director for principal gifts in the university’s central Development and Alumni Relations Office. While in that position, she was tapped to be the acting associate dean for development and alumni relations for the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
In the SAIS position, Hitchcock led a team of 19; worked with the major gift officers to ensure the successful completion of a $15 million endowed fellowship campaign to honor the school’s 75th anniversary; managed communications for the dean’s transition; and implemented new processes to strategically manage the dean’s development and alumni relations activity.
“Rachel brings a broad array of expertise to the Krieger School, particularly in the areas of principal gifts, annual and major gift solicitation, working with boards and volunteers, and corporate and foundation relations,” says Beverly Wendland, James B. Knapp Dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. “She is engaging, enthusiastic, capable, and focused. I know she will take the Krieger School to its next level of excellence.”
In addition to Johns Hopkins, Hitchcock has worked in development at the Oregon Health and Science University and was a fundraiser on the team that raised more than $500 million in two years toward the completion of the $1 billion Knight Cancer Challenge. She has more than 15 years of experience in development, having worked at Columbia University, where she started her development career; at the University of Pennsylvania in the New York Regional Office; and at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in New York City.
“I am delighted to be joining the team at the Krieger School,” says Hitchcock. “I believe that at the heart of every great university is a school that offers undergraduate and graduate students comprehensive education from world-renowned faculty and scholars—we have that here at Krieger. I look forward to working with my colleagues in the dean’s office, the faculty and staff, and the many thousands of alumni worldwide to advance the mission of our school.”
As a four-year, scholarship student-athlete, Hitchcock received her undergraduate degree from Syracuse University, with a double major in public relations and Spanish. She earned a master’s degree in strategic communications from Columbia University, where she is an engaged alumni volunteer. Hitchcock has held a Certified Fund-Raising Executive (CFRE) credential since 2008.
Dean Beverly Wendland Named Provost at Washington University
Beverly Wendland, an accomplished biology scholar, educator, and academic leader who has served for the past five years as the James B. Knapp Dean of Johns Hopkins University’s Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, has been appointed the next provost of Washington University in St. Louis.
Wendland, a member of the Johns Hopkins faculty since 1998, will assume her new role on July 1.
“A scientist who championed the humanities, an academic leader who advocated fiercely for access and inclusion at all levels, and a dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences who was also the consummate university citizen, Beverly has made a profound and lasting impact on the Krieger School and Johns Hopkins,” says Ronald J. Daniels, university president.
Wendland oversees the Krieger School and its 22 academic departments within the natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. During her tenure as dean, she guided the school through a successful capital campaign that raised $747 million, including a record $75 million gift to the university’s philosophy program in 2018. She also played a critical role in the establishment of both the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute as a focal point for humanities scholarship and programming at JHU, and of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute, a multidisciplinary academic and public forum dedicated to strengthening democracy around the world by improving and expanding civic engagement and inclusive dialogue.
“The excitement I have about the opportunity to move to Washington University as provost is accompanied by bittersweet feelings about leaving my ‘home’ for more than 20 years,” says Wendland. “I have been fortunate to work with so many dedicated and skilled colleagues across the university, and I view my accomplishments as ‘our’ accomplishments—it truly has been a team effort. I will miss Hopkins, but I will take with me the countless friendships and memories formed over the years with wonderful students, colleagues, and alumni.”
During her tenure as dean, Wendland has advocated for innovative approaches to teaching and liberal arts education, overseeing the Krieger School’s recent efforts to strengthen and personalize undergraduate education, including through the expansion of small seminar courses, increased use of active learning methods, and more research opportunities in all disciplines. She has also been a champion of diversity and inclusion, developing and supporting strategies to enhance hiring practices and bolster graduate student pipelines to diversify the school’s faculty and students.
Wendland is a 1986 bioengineering graduate of the University of California, San Diego, and she earned her doctorate in neurosciences at Stanford University in 1994. She joined Hopkins after completing postdoctoral studies at UCSD.
As a scientist, she focuses on the study of the working of cells, using simple yeast as a model to gain insight into the development and treatment of complex human disease. In 2015, she was named a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for her groundbreaking studies on the genetic, molecular, biochemical, and biophysical mechanisms underlying endocytosis.
Wendland, a staunch advocate of interdisciplinary research, chaired the Krieger School’s Department of Biology from 2009 until she was named interim dean in July 2014, succeeding Katherine Newman. She assumed the role of dean on a permanent basis in February 2015.
Beverly Wendland Fellowship for Excellence and Diversity in the Natural Sciences
Alumni and donors have the opportunity to join us to honor Beverly Wendland’s leadership and recognize the strides made under her tenure as dean, as well as support the development of future ranks of faculty who will also reflect the diversity of the student population.
We hope to establish a new graduate fellowship fund for Krieger School of Arts & Sciences graduate students ensuring that Dean Wendland’s legacy and commitment to research and diversity endures beyond her decades at Homewood. Gifts will help to establish an endowed fund to support graduate students in their pursuit of new knowledge as they further their careers. The fellowship will be directed annually to a student who reflects a commitment to excellence in their area of study in the natural sciences and whose presence will add diversity to the academy.
Krieger School Leads Commemoration of Women’s Suffrage
One hundred years ago, Congress ratified the 19th Amendment, barring states from denying voting rights based on sex. In November 1920, more than eight million women voted for the first time.
At Johns Hopkins in 2020, events throughout the year and across divisions are highlighting the amendment’s centennial. Led by Beverly Wendland, dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, and former U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski, Homewood Professor of Public Policy, a group bridging Hopkins and the wider community has been coordinating a series of celebrations, exhibits, concerts, and presentations to explore this watershed moment and its complex background and impact.
Bess Vincent, director of special projects in the Dean’s Office, has been managing the effort and says contributors to the commemoration include Johns Hopkins Provost Sunil Kumar and affiliates from the Bloomberg School of Public Health, Carey Business School, School of Nursing, Whiting School of Engineering, Johns Hopkins Libraries and Museums, Peabody Institute, School of Advanced International Studies, School of Education, School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins Health System, and more.
“The 100-year anniversary of the 19th Amendment’s ratification presents us with a quintessential teachable moment,” Wendland says. “Using lenses from multiple disciplines—including history, political science, sociology, art history, literature, and philosophy—this centennial gives us the opportunity to reexamine what really happened, gain new understanding about who and where we are today, and anticipate what lies ahead.”
Events so far have included the following:
- The student-led group Hopkins Votes hosted an Absentee Ballot Party for students to register to vote and/or cast absentee ballots.
- Sheridan Libraries’ Special Collections hosted a vintage game night, where participants played games marketed to women and girls in the 20th century, including Panko, from 1910, and Women’s Lib? The Game of Women’s Rights, from 1970.
- The Milton S. Eisenhower Library displayed “Votes and Petticoats: Suffrage Postcards Exhibition,” a collection of 48 suffrage postcards following four themes selected by student curators: animals; children; fashion and flirtation; and role reversal.
- An interactive vintage voting booth has been on display on the M-level of the library. The machine is similar to the one women would have used to cast their first ballots after gaining the right to vote in 1920.
and students gathered for a vintage game night.
[Photos: Will Kirk, Johns Hopkins University]
In the wider community, organizations celebrating the anniversary and, in some cases, joining the Hopkins efforts, include the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, Goucher College, Towson University, and the Maryland Women’s Heritage Center.
Although the movement that ultimately led to women’s suffrage lasted 72 years, the passing of the 19th Amendment was far from the end of the effort; many women, in addition to nonwhite men, still faced enormous barriers preventing them from exercising their voting rights. The fight itself—as well as the ways in which it is remembered today—was heavily influenced by racism, sexism, and xenophobia. Many of the commemorative activities on campus and beyond have explored these interwoven factors and their lingering legacy.
The commemoration is designed to encourage exploration and awareness of every complicated facet of the historic milestone.
“Studying our history is so important. It is how we learn who we are, where we come from, and most importantly, how to be better than we were before,” Mikulski said. “I keep saying that this is bigger than ‘pantaloons and parasols.’ And that we need to make sure we remember, reflect, and recommit to the 19th Amendment as we commemorate women’s suffrage in America.”
Dean’s Desktop
My original plan for this column was to tell you that I have accepted the position of provost at Washington University in St. Louis, and all of the amazing things that I will miss about the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.
But that was before the whole world changed.
Usually I write this column from my office window overlooking the Decker Quad, where students and faculty rush back and forth to classes, perhaps stopping to shake hands or share a laugh. But the quad is vacant now, and I’m sitting in my home office, essentially quarantined, like the rest of humanity, writing my final column for the Arts & Sciences Magazine. Occasionally our dogs, Lucy and Sookie, will wander in with inquisitive stares. They aren’t used to being home all the time. Every day, my husband, Michael McCaffery—director of the university’s Integrated Imaging Center—and I used to bring our dogs to work with us on the Homewood campus. But work is happening from home now.
The COVID-19 virus has had all of us working, living, and learning in uncommon ways that we never imagined. What started as a usual spring semester, full of promise and anticipation, is ending instead with social distancing, many favorite and important events being rescheduled or canceled, and more than a fair share of anxiety and fear.
And during this time, when each day brings a new challenge, a new change, a new threat, I have been repeatedly buoyed by the courage and dedication of the faculty and students of the Krieger School.
—Dean Beverly Wendland
And during this time, when each day brings a new challenge, a new change, a new threat, I have been repeatedly buoyed by the courage and dedication of the faculty and students of the Krieger School. They have remained steadfast in the midst of a tsunami of change. In what is true Hopkins fashion, they rolled up their respective sleeves and found solutions. They figured out how to teach laboratory classes remotely, how to conduct fieldwork from a laptop, and how to use the library without setting a foot in the building. You can read more about how our students and faculty adapted in a new feature. And none of this would have been possible without our adaptable and dedicated staff.
It has not been easy for anyone in higher education—not for our scholars, striving to provide a quality Hopkins education in innovative ways; not for our seniors, who were looking forward to graduating with their friends; and not for any of us who value the camaraderie of meeting in person with colleagues. For all of our advanced technologies and modes of communicating remotely, nothing replaces the synergy of real, live human interaction.
As I prepare to take on my new position at Wash U (you can read more about that here), under current circumstances I realize that I won’t be able to say goodbye in person to many of the students and colleagues I have interacted with over the years. Of course, I will return to visit, but I still feel like I am missing a sense of closure.
So let me take a moment here to express my gratitude to the members of the Hopkins family; those here now, and those I’ve worked with and taught over the past two decades. I can honestly say that I have learned something from each and every one of you. From the welcome and unexpected phone call from an alum, to an intense conversation with a graduate student about a complex research problem, to creative problem-solving meetings with my stellar leadership team: You have brought challenge, fulfillment, curiosity, gratitude, laughter, and joy to my days and years at Hopkins, and you will forever remain in my heart and mind.
Thank you for all of the collaboration and friendship, and farewell.
Sincerely,
Beverly Wendland
James B. Knapp Dean
Alumni Kudos: Fall 2019
Howard Adler ’72 was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for the Financial Stability Oversight Council, an entity established by the Dodd Frank Act to identify and respond to threats to U.S. financial stability.
Caren M. Fleit ’78, a managing director at Korn Ferry consulting firm, was elected to the board of directors of the Humane Society of the United States.
Minji Kim ’18, a sixth-grade science teacher at Success Academy Harlem West, received a 2019 Success Academy Excellence Award for Rookie of the Year.
Samantha D. Maragh ’08 received a 2019 Outstanding Young Scientist award from the Maryland Academy of Sciences and the Maryland Science Center. She leads the National Institute of Standards and Technology Genome Editing Consortium.
Syllabus: A close look inside the classroom
Americans in Paris
[photo: Howard Korn]
During the early decades of the 20th century, expatriate and exiled African American musicians and performing artists flocked to France, where their New Orleans and free improvisation styles quickly revolutionized the music, art, and very culture of a European nation primed to embrace the innovations of the Jazz Age.
Recently, British and American scholars have turned to an exploration of the factors causing this love affair between France and jazz to flourish, and what exactly it meant both for the artists themselves and for France’s culture and politics, aesthetics and economics. Krieger School French professor Derek Schilling seized this opportunity to create a new course, which he offered last fall, whereby students could study the developments through a lens of music, literature, and language.
“The spate of high quality cultural criticism on jazz in France struck me as an ideal moment to devote a course to it,” says Schilling, professor and chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures.
The course, For the Record, used readings in music criticism, history, and literature, along with frequent close listening to the music of the times, to investigate the impact on mainstream and avant-garde French culture of the influx of jazz—ranging from Josephine Baker in the 1920s to bebop and 1960s-era free improvisation. The course’s culmination was an international symposium held on campus. It featured noted scholars and legendary musicians, some of whom were reunited for the first time since a 1969 festival in Algiers. That festival brought together New York, Chicago, European, and Afro-Caribbean performers. Symposium participants included, among others, musicians Dave Burrell, Jacques Coursil, and Archie Shepp, and translator and activist Elaine Mokhtefi.
“…music listening supplements rich historical readings, all of which are brought together in seminar-style discussions. It leads back to something grounded, something concrete, from which we can grow.”
—Lukas MacKinney ’21
“For the Record has been one of my most engaging classes this semester, if not out of all my time at Hopkins so far,” says junior Lukas MacKinney, who is double-majoring in French and film and media studies. “The course operates at many levels; music listening supplements rich historical readings, all of which are brought together in seminar-style discussions. It leads back to something grounded, something concrete, from which we can grow.”
Schilling, too, described the course as the most exciting one he’s taught at Hopkins. As both a fan of the genre and a scholar of French, he guided the students’ exploration of the intersections between the fields. Each of the 14 students, with majors ranging from neuroscience to sociology, chemistry to political science, brought valuable information and perspective to the table, Schilling says, creating a melting pot of learning.
“The course dynamic has been interesting because of the different disciplines,” he says. “From those with music performance experience, we hear interesting comments about structure, rhythm, and timbre. Others with more of a literary background talk about the use of language. Everyone has found a way in. Everyone has found connections to other courses of study.”
“… this class reminds me how impactful art can be on a culture, or a person’s daily life, or a movement, and how change can be facilitated not just through discovery, but also by creation.”
—Guiliana Lee ’20
Senior Giuliana Lee, majoring in French and chemistry, says she enrolled in the course because music has played a significant role in her life. It’s been something she’s turned to in times of struggle, and she wanted to learn what it meant for other people.
“The course has given me a much deeper appreciation not only for music itself, but for the history of France and how connected that history is globally,” she says. “We tend to focus on cutting-edge technology, and ‘what’s the new science?’, and I have a foot in that pool as a chemist, but this class reminds me how impactful art can be on a culture, or a person’s daily life, or a movement, and how change can be facilitated not just through discovery, but also by creation.”
[photos: Howard Korn]