For the past several months, MSU’s Apparel and Textile Design (ATD) faculty, alumni, and students have used their skills and contributed their time in the fight against COVID-19 by constructing masks and teaching others how to make their own through an online video. These students, faculty, and alumni were encouraged by a social media campaign that shared information about ways…
The CREATE! Micro-Grant Program has selected 12 student projects to each receive $500 to respond critically and imaginatively to events occurring during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the winning projects also will reflect on the fight for social justice in the Black Lives Matter movement, producing art that responds to struggles brought on by the pandemic and acts of police…
Each year, the College of Arts & Letters presents two Varg-Sullivan Endowed Graduate Awards to graduate students for their outstanding achievement in the arts or letters. This year’s winners are Jessica Stokes, Outstanding Achievement in the Arts recipient, and Bronson Hui, Outstanding Achievement in the Letters recipient. Paul Varg and Richard Sullivan are former Deans of the College of Arts…
It is easy to deploy diversity rhetoric; by contrast, helping create an inclusive and just society is a monumental task, even more so, during tumultuous times. This is why, however well-intentioned, so many institutions and companies choose rhetoric. As we commemorate the anniversary of the end of slavery in the United States, we must commit to the hard, latter choice:…
Resilient – that is the word to describe the students of the 2019-2020 Fiction Filmmaking Capstone class, who faced countless obstacles this past academic year, but each time they were knocked down, they stood up and figured out a way to move forward. Students in this capstone course spend the fall and spring semesters producing an original film in order…
Lynn Wolff’s decision to study German in middle school was purely pragmatic. Most kids her age took Spanish. She wanted to be different. Plus, it simply made sense to learn German when she lived in Wisconsin — a state where nearly 45 percent of the population claim German ancestry. Ultimately, learning German opened her eyes to the world beyond the borders…
Jonathan Choti, Assistant Professor of African Languages in the Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages, and two doctoral students, Pauline Wambua (Ph.D. in Educational Policy) and Ja’La Wourman (Ph.D. in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures), collectively received the 2020 Excellence Award in Interdisciplinary Scholarship (EAIS) for their 2019 study abroad project, Sustainable Community Development in Tanzania. Choti was the faculty leader of the…
In 2018, the Huffington Post described intimacy directing as “an emerging field in which a small group of professionals are pushing to develop standards and procedures for scenes involving physical intimacy in the wake of a public reckoning with sexual misconduct throughout the entertainment industry.” That same year, Michigan State University's Department of Theatre hired Alexis Black as Assistant Professor of Acting and Movement, in part,…
At the beginning of the Spring 2020 semester, Musical Theatre students in MSU’s Department of Theatre expected to finish the academic year with some intense scene work that would bring together every element of what they had learned. When the university switched to remote learning for the remainder of the semester, the direction of the course began an organic shift, born out…
The three winners of the CAL Virtual Career Readiness Roadmap Competition recently were announced and received prizes, ranging from $500 to $1,200. Facilitated by the Excel Network as part of the MSUFCU Dean’s Choice Grant, the competition was open to MSU students with a major in the College of Arts & Letters and required them to complete various career readiness-related tasks according to…