CAS Faculty Grants


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Faculty Grants
2007-08 Grant Recipients Below are the recipients of the 2007-08 awards with a brief synopsis of their proposals. Recipients present their work at a “Bring Your Own Brain” lunch talk organized by the Center.


Mariana Achugar Assistant Professor of SLA & Spanish Kenya Dworkin Assoicate Professor Hispanic Studies Felipe Gomez Lecturer in Spanish	The Circulo Outreach Program at CMU: Fostering Community for Hispanic Children & Families through the Arts CMU's Circulo Outreach Program (Circulo Juvenil de Cultura) is an Hispanic Heritage Linguistic and Cultural Program for first- and second generation, Spanish-speaking immigrant children between the ages of 6-12 in the greater Pittsburgh area. It is our goal to provide a service to the growing Hispanic community in Pittsburgh by offering children of Hispanic descent an opportunity to develop their linguistic and cultural literacy in Spanish, to provide an environment that will encourage them to retain and be prideful of their heritage language and cultures, and to provide a service opportunity and even create a potential language and culture laboratory for the children to explore the relationship between the arts and society, and provide local and Latino artists a space in which to work with the community. The Fall 2007 ten-week program held workshops in music, song, dance, art, theater, costume and scenery design-all in Spanish. For the Spring 2008 semester, we are conducting workshops that will culminate in the children having a final public exhibit/presentation (song, dance, reciting, photos, video) on May 3rd and 4th, 2008. Locations: TBA

Charlene Castellano Teaching Professor of Russian	WINGING IT with Joseph Brodsky: A Poet Pictures Writing for a New World This study explores the work of the celebrated Russian émigré poet Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996), within the framework of his belief in the social responsibility of poets to understand poetry as a vehicle for elaborating human ethics. At the center of the study lies the poem "Butterfly," written in 1972 as Brodsky was deciding whether to comply with the Soviet regime's hostile 'request' that he emigrate, or to remain on home turf under threat to life and livelihood. This poem emerges as emblematic of the strategies by which Brodsky fashioned a body of work that could communicate beyond the bounds of his native language. His work at large is seen to be a highly responsive inter-art that thrives on images deriving from painting, drawing, photography and cinema. As he marshals the forces of the fine arts, Brodsky constructs an enabling myth of poetry as vision, permitting his claim that poetry is "nothing less than our anthropological goal."

Michael Chemers Assistant Professor of Dramatic Literature	Staging Stigma: A Critical History of the American Freak Show 1807-2007 Staging Stigma is an examination of freak shows during four key historical moments in American history, and demonstrates the importance of the freak show to a progressive and politicized study of both theatrical history and of disability history. It is designed to be a foundation for the work of scholars who see important connections between the study of disability in society and the study of the theatre. It provides details and analysis not only of the history of the freak show but of the forces that shaped and recorded that history. It incorporates the voices of actual participants in the show (living or historical), unlike most similar works. This grant will provide help in securing permissions to publish historical photos in the upcoming book which go to press in late 2008.

Elaine A. King Professor of History of Art, Theory/Museum Studies	Taking Positions: Arguing Critical Criteria The production and crtitical assessment of contemporary art are undergoing major transformations. What we value in art today is not apparent because of interdisciplinary complexity, the absence of a single style, and the affect of new technologies. Since minimalism, conceptual, and performance art in the 1960s, critical judgments about art have become difficult if not obsolete. In the absence of "skill" as an accepted determination, no comprehensible criteria for evaluative judgment have emerged. In this project, research will be conducted about contemorary art criticism and criteria, and individuals will be invited to write essays on the subject. The purpose of the book is to argue for the need for critical criteria by exploring the range of criterion to which works of contemporary art in the post-production era may be held and the proposed values such arguments are meant to sustain, contest or introduce. Additionally, it is anticipated that this research will be developed into journal articles and papers.

Jon Rubin Assistant Professor of Art	Other Options Pittsburgh Other Options Pittsburgh is a symposium and project-based exhibition organized by Carnegie Mellon-affiliated project TENT SHOW, Pittsburgh-based artist group ReTool and Chicago-based curatorial team InCUBATE. In April 2008, Other Options Pittsburgh will bring together artists and community organizers to investigate, imagine and enact alternative economic models. The symposium will comprise an exhibition, project-based collaborations between local and visiting artists, a panel discussion, artist presentations and a cottage industry expo. The project collaborators share an interest in creating alternative infrastructures for supporting and producing art, culture and resistance. Through art-based activity, Other Options Pittsburgh incubates tools and strategies with the potential to effect meaningful change for individuals and society.

Franco Sciannameo Director of BHA/BSA Interdisciplinary Degree Programs	ViolaStories ViolaStories is a collection of short stories, music performances, videos, and drawings created between 1992 and 1994 at the Carnegie Mellon Centre de Tours in France as part of an arts and humanities interdisciplinary summer abroad program sponsored by Carnegie Mellon University. The highly programmatic musical works included in this collection were introduced and performed by Franco Sciannameo before students, faculty, and guests who expressed their impressions about the works' narratives through videos, poems, prose, and drawings. The purpose of the present project, entitled ViolaStories, is to create a lasting document about exceptional educational time spent by Carnegie Mellon faculty and students, working together in a villa located in Tours along the river Loire in the Touraine region of France. Furthermore, the document will serve as a pedagogical interdisciplinary tool that demonstrates how the fusion of arts and humanities can generate new knowledge.

Suzie Silver Associate Professor of Art	AV Lodge Presents: Fruit Machine A ten-part, evening-length media performance, Fruit Machine is a bawdy look at diverse sexualities. The parade of characters includes a life-sized toy robot; a dome-headed rabbit that uses his/her body as an instrument; and an androgynous punk rock bagpipe player. Five live acts are each followed by a related music video. In the live acts, costumes and props are wireless devices, which control video and sound in custom computer programs created in Max/MSP/Jitter and Processing. The imagery: colorful, playful and humorous, uses the classic strategies of camp aesthetics to challenge hetero-normative assumptions. The goal of Fruit Machine is to present an evening length media performance that uses limited means to transport the audience into a magical world of rich illusions and mutable genders. It is structured to allow for revision, expansion, alteration and excerpting. The staging can be accomplished in a small or large space in widely varied settings. Sections of the project have already been presented in performances at galleries in Washington, D.C. and Chicago. The full-length performance will premier in July 2008 as part of the Pittsburgh Biennial at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts and will be performed again in November 2008 in San Francisco.

Susanne Slavick Professor of Art	Reparations Reparations is a solo exhibition as "Artist of the Year" at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts, September 12 - November 2, 2008. The artist presents paintings and work on paper from R&R&R, a series that responds to our military expression for "rest and relaxation," converting it to visual gestures of "remorse" and "renewal." In digitally and manually transforming found photographs of wreckage, she reveals, regrets and restores what has been decimated and dislocated. Through the flesh of her materials, a palette that breathes, and motifs from the very cultures under attack, she tries to supplant what has been lost — to replace what has been displaced. Works from this project will travel to other venues once the PCA exhibit closes and a color catalogue with an essay will accompany the exhibit.

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