Author Rabih Alameddine has spent time “floating” between professions and continents since college. Concentrating on writing since his mid-30s, he is doing what he feels he is supposed to be doing, Alameddine said recently in an email.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, University of Virginia faculty scrambled to find ways to deliver a traditional college education online. But as faculty in UVA’s College of Arts & Sciences worked to educate their students despite the obstacles presented by COVID-19, they found themselves creating the foundation for changes to the practice of art education – changes that may make it just a little better than it was before.
From memoir to mystery, from work advice to analysis of the 2020 elections, University of Virginia faculty members and alumni have published, or soon will publish, books that appeal to a wide range of tastes and topics.
The Women’s Center (renamed in 2017, thanks to the generous support of Maxine Platzer Lynn, a 1951 alumna of what is now the School of Education and Human Development) was created to offer more resources and programs to women at UVA and in the community – especially students, of course – and to foster leadership and work on gender justice. Today, its programs include mentoring and outreach to boys and young men, as well as to girls and young women.
Hajjar Baban’s experience as an immigrant to America exists in all aspects of her work, she says, from “the words that I may obsess over to images that become motifs.” Baban – who received a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 2020 and is currently a Master of Fine Arts student in the University of Virginia’s Creative Writing Program in poetry – was awarded the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, a merit-based award to support graduate study for immigrants and children of immigrants. Founded by Hungarian immigrants Daisy M. Soros and her late husband Paul Soros, the fellowship program honors the contributions of continuing generations of immigrants in the United States.
This year’s Double Take speakers were, in order of appearance, former Cavalier football player and member of the Class of 2020 Charles Snowden, UVA’s Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer J.J. Davis, first-year student Taylor Curro, community member Paul C. Harris Sr., his son and ’13, ‘16 ‘double Hoo’ Paul C. Harris Jr., UVA Hospital Cafeterias sous chef Eryne Zerihun and Joel Gardner, a ‘70, ‘74 ‘double Hoo.’
UVA President Jim Ryan announced at a Board of Visitors meeting a $50 million lead gift from Tessa Ader for the building of a performing arts center at the University.
The Virginia Commission for the Arts has named six Virginia poets to receive Poetry Fellowships in 2022. Fellowships are awarded annually to artists residing in Virginia in recognition of creative excellence. Among the awardees are UVA Professors Debra Nystrom and Kiki Petrosino, along with MFA program alumna and Virginia Tech Professor Erika Meitner.
From academic research to rollicking fiction, UVA alumni and faculty members have been churning out books on a variety of topics. Here’s a look at some of them.
According to UVA Lecturer in Spanish and professional translator Nieves García Prados, translation is an exercise in challenge and compromise, linguistically, and also culturally: “When translating, students seek solutions to the challenges they face, and therefore achieve, in my opinion, a deeper understanding of the meaning, structure, and use of the language, both the mother tongue and the one they are learning.”
