news & events
Feature
Houston Shakespeare Festival
The Houston Shakespeare Festival, now celebrating its 34th season, is part of a professional project of the UH School of Theatre and Dance. This year the festival will feature Julius Caesar and Cymbeline. The festival will run from August 1-10 at the Miller Outdoor Theatre. For dates and ticket information visit the School of Theatre and Dance web site. (Scene from Cymbeline pictured on homepage)
Study Abroad
The African American Studies (AAS) Program and the Chinese Studies Program are preparing for a summer of learning abroad. The AAS Summer Study Tour to Ghana, West Africa will take place July 7-21. Five students will study at the University of Ghana at Legon, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and the University of Cape Coast. Students will experience the beauty, history and culture of Africa and its people. The AAS Program has sponsored over thirty students' travel to Ghana since 2003.
The Chinese Studies Program will travel with 20 students to Beijing China July 2 – August 6. Students will have the opportunity to acquire communication tools to interact with Chinese speakers in a wide range of real life situations. This will be the sixth trip to China for the department.
Visit the AAS and Chinese Studies web sites for more information.
The Children’s Theatre Festival
The Children’s Theatre Festival is a professional project of the UH School of Theatre and Dance. The 2008 festival will feature the classic tales of Sleeping Beauty and The Emperor’s New Clothes. Performances will run from June 11 to July 18 in the Lyndall Finley Wortham Theatre. Visit the School of Theatre and Dance web site for show times and ticket information.
The 2008 Houston Area Exhibition
Showing at Blaffer Gallery through August 2, 2008, the Houston Area Exhibition takes the pulse of contemporary art made in Houston to offer a snapshot of what matters to artists in the here and now. To learn more about the exhibit visit the Blaffer Gallery web site.
News
Magsmen and Hillerbrand
Visual Studies Affiliated Faculty, Mary Magsmen and Stephan Hillerbrand's Forced Field is now showing at the Houston Center for Photography.
Magsamen is an adjunct Professor with the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Performing Arts and Hillerbrand is an Assistant Professor of Art and the University of Houston Area Coordinator for Photography.
Force Fields will be the featured exhibit at the Houston Center for Photography through July 13. The installation explores ideas about the pressures of daily life through playful use of a children’s toy, an inflatable balloon.
For more information visit the Visual Studies web site.
Stokes and Stronks win Buffy awards
The 2008 Buffy Awards were presented at the close of the Big Range Dance festival on June 15. The UH School of Theatre and Dance was well represented at the event. Karen Stokes, associate professor, received the award for Best choreographer in the Evening-Length Concert category, for her piece, Hometown. Jhon Stronks, adjunct faculty, received honors for Best choreographer in the 15-40 minutes category for Ok, I'm Here...Now What? and Best choreographer in the Under 15 minutes category for A View From the Edge. Former UH guest choreographer, Jennifer Wood also received an award in the Best choreographer in the Evening-Length Concert category for 8:10 Assembly.
The Big Range Dance Festival is funded in part by grants from the City of Houston through the Houston Arts Alliance, Houston Endowment, Inc., the Brown Foundation, and the Cullen Trust for the Performing Arts.
Texas Music Festival
The Moores School of Music will host the Texas Music Festival from May 30 to June 28. The festival, founded in 1990, provides young professional musicians with a challenging musical environment in orchestral, chamber music, and solo performances. To learn more visit the Texas Music Festival web site.
Dr. Wyman Herendeen
English Department Chair, Dr. Wyman Herendeen has published "William Camden: A Life in Context" (Boydell & Brewer).
Francis Receives Farfel Award
David Francis has had a happy home at UH for the past 24 years, from his time as a student to his years serving as psychology department chair. His contributions have not gone unnoticed. He is the 2008 Esther Farfel Award recipient.
School of Communication renamed
The UH School of Communication has been renamed to The Jack J. Valenti School of Communication. The new name is in honor of the late Jack Valenti, adviser to President Lyndon Johnson and head of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) for nearly four decades. Valenti, who died last year at the age of 85, was born and raised in Houston and was a graduate of the University of Houston (1946). Download the PDF below to read this announcement in its entirety. View the Channel 39 coverage of this event.
Dr. William (Bill) Moffit (5/13/1925- 3/5/2008)
Dr. Moffit passed away on Wednesday, March 5, 2008 in Jacksonville. Florida. The former Cougar Marching Band Director will be honored with a memorial service on Monday, March 10th. The service will feature a selection of Dr. Moffit's music and arrangements. For more information about the memorial service, visit the Moores School of Music web site.
Shimko wins research award
Assistant Professor of Theatre History & Dramaturgy, Dr. Robert Shimko, was awarded the Robert Schanke Theatre Research Award at this year's MATC conference in Kansas City. The prize is given for the best paper delivered by an untenured faculty member at the conference and is the most prestigious award presented by MATC. He received a cash award and his paper, The Miseries of History: Shakespearian Extremity as Cautionary Tale on the Restoration Stage, may be published in the journal Theatre History Studies. Dr. Shimko was also elected to a two-year term as the co-chair for the theatre history area of the conference, chaired three panels and was an advisor for one of the Emerging Scholars award winners.
Events
Survey Methodology: New Developments
The University of Houston Center for Public Policy will host Dr. Harold Clarke
and Dr. Marianne Stewart of the University of Texas at Dallas’ School of
Economics to discuss new developments in survey methodology from 10 a.m. to
noon on Wednesday, April 30, in the Heyne Building’s Room 135. Dr. Clarke and
Dr. Stewart will discuss new developments in survey methodology (survey
“mode”). Exploring new methods for collecting survey data — rather than
by traditional means such as the telephone — is a big challenge today. This
is particularly relevant to how data is collected for panels and for cross
sectional surveys such as Stephen Klineberg’s popular Houston Area Survey.
Dr. Clarke and Dr. Stewart will present the findings from their experiments
with alternative survey methods in the British National Election Study.
Refreshments and snacks will be served. To learn more visit the CPP web site.
Artists Up Close
The Spring 2008 installment of Artists Up Close will take the form of a Blaffer Gallery Contemporary Salon, in conjunction with the exhibition Chantal Akerman: Moving Through Time and Space (January 19 – March 29). The discussion will be led by Bill Arning, Curator at MIT List Visual Arts Center and Terrie Sultan, Director of Blaffer Gallery, plus other special guests. For more about this event visit the CWMCA web site.
2008 UH Faculty Showcase
Educational Technology and University Outreach and the Instructional Designers from the UH Central campus presented the 2008 UH Faculty Showcase on February 8, 2008. The event showcased faculty members from across disciplines and colleges as they presented innovations and enhancements implemented in their courses. For more details about this event, visit the Faculty Showcase web site.
Student-run publication host reading
UH student-run publication, Glass Mountain recently staged a reading as the pre-performance act before Ira Glass's lecture/performance. The public radio host was in Houston under the auspices of the Society for the Performing Arts (SPA) at the Wortham Theater Center downtown.
English professor, Dr. Lynn Voskuil is the advisor for Glass Mountain, an undergraduate creative writing journal. Most of the contributors to this entirely student-run publication are majors in the English Department and/or Creative Writing Program. Four undergraduate students published in the journal--two poets and two prose writers—read their work during the event in the "Cullen Alcove” for the sixty plus SPA patrons which dropped by. For more information visit the Glass Mountain web site.
Related links: CLASS calendar, CLASS achievements, awards & recognition
