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University of Houston
Summer 2015 Edition

Tier One Excellence:
2015 Faculty Awards and Honors


Several university and college-wide awards recognize exemplary faculty achievements in teaching and research. The College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences congratulates its 2015 honorees and celebrates their accomplishments and recognizes their talent and ability to continue their trajectory of success and achievement.






CLASS Students in the Media

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Aaron Griffin is among 100 classical musicians who were selected from the world's top music conservatories to study and perform at the 26th annual Immanuel and Helen Olshan Texas Music Festival - an event that could help lead to a career as an orchestral musician. Griffin is studying horn performance at UH Moores School of Music. At UH, Griffin has played at the top of all of the ensembles and is principal of the Wind Ensemble. His accomplishment is highlighted in the Houston Chronicle article, Musicians win spots at music festival.
   
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Rachel Fairbank is a graduate student in UH's Creative Writing Program. She recently documented her memories of riding the bus to and from work in the Houston Chronicle article, How I learned to love a two-hour bus commute.
   

CLASS Alumni/ae Notes

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According to the Houston Chronicle article, Summer of Shakespeare: 'Fear no more the heat o' the sun', Suzelle Palacios, a recent graduate of the UH acting program, performed sonnets to a full house at the Brazos Bookstore as part of the Houston Shakespeare Festival. Soon, Palacios will be continuing her theater studies at the Old Globe Program in graduate studies at the University of San Diego.
   
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Phillip Sammons, a graduate of the UH Moores School of Music, has been selected to participate at the 26th annual Immanuel and Helen Olshan Texas Music Festival in Houston. Only 100 musicians from across the country are chosen to participate in this event. According to the Houston Chronicle article, Katy clarinetist among select group of musicians playing in annual fest, after earning a bachelor of music degree from UH, Sammons worked at Kids' Orchestra in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, while completing a master of music degree in clarinet performance this year at Louisiana State University. Following the Texas Music Festival, Sammons will become the new music teacher at Houston Independent School District's Horn Academy in Bellaire.
   

CLASS Faculty in the Media

In The New York Times Magazine recently, Creative Writing Associate Professor Mat Johnson described learning from a DNA test that he is 26 percent African in his essay, Proving My Blackness. A review of his new novel, Loving Day, appeared on the cover of The New York Times Sunday Book Review with the headline: "Blackish in America." Other reviews and media coverage include:


Professor of modern and classical languages, Robert Zaretsky, wrote a book titled Boswell’s Enlightenment which was reviewed in the Los Angeles Review of Books article, Josh Emmons on Boswell’s Enlightenment. In addition, Zaretsky wrote the following articles:
  
   
Research conducted by Temple Northup, assistant professor of communications, was featured in the Yahoo! article, TV news may lead to racial bias and the PsychCentral article, Nightly News Negatively Impacts Racial Bias. The results of his studies conducted in the US and Austria suggest that in both these countries, regular exposure to stereotypical news coverage creates negative implicit attitudes towards certain social groups.
   
Associate professor of piano, Tali Morgulis, was profiled in the Jewish Herald-Voice article, On Tali Morgulis: I hear a symphony.  The story details her journey from her childhood in Ukraine to her teenage years in Israel, her graduate education in Boston, and her first impressions of UH.
   
Paul Gregory, professor of economics, penned the article, Sanction FIFA And Putin At The Same Time: Take The 2018 World Cup From Russia, for Forbes.
   
The Arab Weekly published the article, Arab Americans fund University Arab Studies, discussing philanthropic support for the growth of the Department of Modern and Classical Languages’ Arab Studies Program led by Director Emran El-Badawi and to endow the Arab American Education Foundation Chair in Modern Arab History in the Department of History.
   
The Examiner recently ran the article, Look up from the screen, take a breath, and slow down, about English professor David Mikics’ research on athazagoraphobia, the fear of being forgotten and mentioned his  book, Slow Reading in a Hurried Age.
   
Brandon Rottinghaus, associate professor of political science, collaborated on a poll with other researchers to determine the best and worst ex-presidents. The research was highlighted in the New York Times article, The Making of a Great Ex-President. Rottinghaus was also recently featured on the Houston Matters program, What Got Done — and What Didn’t — During the 84th Texas Legislature?
   
Nick Flynn’s new collection, My Feelings: Poems, was featured in the Houston Chronicle article, Nick Flynn / weighs in: A prose writer unleashes poetry.  The article discusses the newest work by the professor of English, as well as his previous works.
   
Associate professor of music, Timothy Hester, talks about and performs Brahms on the Houston Public Media program, Classical Classroom, Episode 13: A lesson from a real live professor - Timothy Hester on Brahms.
   

Calendar


Now – September 5: Early Awnings: Henning Bohl with Sergei Tcherepnin exhibition
On display at the Blaffer Art Museum

Early Awnings is an installation of sculptures, drawings, and sound conceived as a multi-dimensional platform for story-telling by artists Henning Bohl and Sergei Tcherepnin. The work was developed in collaboration with students from UH’s Creative Writing Program. Read more about the exhibition here.


Now – September 5: Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler: Sound Speed Marker exhibition
On display at the Blaffer Art Museum

Claudia Schmuckli, Blaffer’s director and chief curator, contributed to the comprehensive catalog for Sound Speed Marker, a trilogy of video installations, related photographs and an outdoor sculpture by the renowned Swiss-American artist duo, Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler. Organized by Ballroom Marfa, where the exhibition premiered in 2014 before traveling to the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, Sound Speed Marker addresses all the known clichés associated with Texas: its industries of cattle, oil and space, its heroes of cowboys, wildcatters and astronauts, its vast land and skies and extreme weather. Read more about the exhibition here.


Summer Book Club 2015 Discussion: July 14
Presented by UH Libraries and the UH Women and Gender Resource Center
The 2015 summer book club is open to all UH students, faculty and staff, and alumni. Readers are invited to gather at the Resource Center, located in the University Center North Room 201, for a literary conversation from 12 noon – 1 p.m. of the novel Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Readers may bring a lunch, and drinks and sweets will be provided.


Houston Shakespeare Festival: July 31 – August 9
Presented by the School of Theatre & Dance

Undergraduate and graduate students join their professors, UH alumni and professional actors on the Miller Outdoor Theatre stage to present the annual Houston Shakespeare Festival. This summer HSF presents the Bard’s Macbeth and The Merchant of Venice in nine nights of alternating performances. All the shows are free and start with a 7:45 p.m. pre-show talk before the 8:30 p.m. curtain rise. Free tickets for covered seating are available at the Miller Outdoor Theatre box office the day of the performance between the hours of 10:30am-1pm. As always, open seating on the hill.

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