Willson Professors
Willson Professorships are collaborations between the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts and UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences through generous gifts from Jane and Harry Willson. Willson Professors are appointed based on the recommendation of UGA senior scholars in the arts and humanities.
Dana Bultman, Harry and Jane Willson Professor in Humanities
I am a scholar of early modern Spanish literature and culture. My research examines the literary and religious writings of the Spanish Empire, and how these forms continue to inform global culture and collective experience today.
My publications include Heretical Mixtures: Feminine and Poetic Opposition to Matter-Spirit Dualism in Spain, 1531–1631, and a critical edition of Francisco de Osuna’s Norte de los estados, a Franciscan conduct manual for married couples. Across this work, I explore how poetry, narrative, and theological writing mediate relationships between individuals and the worlds they inhabit, and how aesthetic forms both sustain and contest structures of power.
My research has also taken shape through international scholarly collaboration and editorial work, including service as book review editor for Calíope and as President of GEMELA, where I helped foster interdisciplinary exchange across institutions in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. In recent years, I have extended this work into public humanities initiatives. I co-direct the VIPR Humanities in Public Life: A Multilingual Inquiry, a vertically integrated research project that brings students and faculty into collaborative, community-based work on storytelling, performance, and cultural life.
Peter Van Zandt Lane, Jane Willson Professor in the Arts
Peter Van Zandt Lane is Professor of Composition and Director of the Roger and Phyllis Dancz Center for New Music at the University of Georgia Hugh Hodgson School of Music. He holds degrees from the University of Miami Frost School of Music and Brandeis University, where he studied composition with Lansing McLoskey, David Rakowski, Eric Chasalow, and Melinda Wagner. Lane’s music thrives at the intersection of expressive lyricism, rhythmic intrigue, and the immersive possibilities of emerging technology. Acclaimed for his ability to bridge contemporary concert music with the evolving landscape of digital sound, Lane’s work explores themes of environmentalism, memory, and the shifting boundaries between physical and virtual experience in a technology-driven world. His output spans chamber, orchestral, and wind ensemble works, electroacoustic compositions, multimedia collaborations, music for dance, and installation. Upon being awarded the Charles Ives Fellowship, the American Academy of Arts and Letters remarked that “at every turn, his propulsive, incisive work is beautifully and confidently made. . . Lane’s music is as inviting as it is sophisticated.”
Recent concert works include Coastal Portrait: Cycles and Thresholds, for orchestra and spatial electronics work composed in collaboration with marine scientists studying long-term coastal ecology; Piano Quartet: The Longitude Problem commissioned by Atlanta Chamber Players (available on Innova Recordings); Chamber Symphony, commissioned by the Barlow Endowment for EQ Ensemble (Boston). Several of his works for wind ensemble –including Hivemind, Astrarium, and his concerto for NY Phil principal trombonist Joseph Alessi, Radix Tyrannis– have become celebrated additions to the American wind ensemble repertory. Lane often incorporates electronic sound or interactive elements into his concert music, with a particular interest in 3D audio technologies. His works have often been programmed at international conferences and festivals including Splice Fest, International Computer Music Conference, Society for Electroacoustic Music in the U.S. A recipient of the 2020 MTNA Distinguished Composer of the Year Award and a 2018 Charles Ives Fellowship, Peter has received fellowships from Copland House, Composers Now, Yaddo, The Hermitage Artist Retreat, and MacDowell Colony.
Peter’s music for contemporary dance created in collaboration with acclaimed choreographer Kate Ladenheim has also garnered international attention, with their 2013 exploration of cyber-activism in the form of an evening-length ballet, HackPolitik, being praised for “boldly div[ing] into current affairs… explor[ing] identity and anarchy in a refreshingly relevant way” (The New York Times). Their second collaboration, GLASS, was dubbed a top-10 work of 2018 by Dance Magazine. He continues to be active as a bassoonist specializing in contemporary chamber and electroacoustic music, having premiered dozens of works by living composers. Recordings of his compositions can be found on New Focus Recordings, PARMA, Mark Records, New Dynamic Records, and Innova Recordings. A multi-instrumentalist, Peter has performed with a variety of contemporary music ensembles, and can also be found playing in bands around the Athens indie music scene. The self-title album of his post-rock songwriting project, Vectory Gardens, was described as an “infectious album of bright pop hooks, killer arrangements and unimpeachable playing.” (Flagpole)
