Short-Term Visiting Fellows

The Willson Center Short-Term Visiting Fellows, nominated by UGA faculty, bring distinguished artists, scholars and performers to the arts and humanities community at the University of Georgia. Visiting Fellows conduct intensive workshops for faculty and students, and give public presentations of their work.

Natasha Barrett

Host: Peter Van Zandt Lane (Music)
Residency Date: January 2023

Natasha Barrett (1972) is a composer exploring new technologies and experimental approaches to sound in a broad range of contemporary music, including concert works, public space sound-art installations and multimedia interactive music. She is internationally renowned for her electroacoustic and acousmatic music, and use of 3D sound technology in composition. Her work is commissioned and performed throughout the world and has received over 20 international awards including the Nordic Council Music Prize, the Giga-Hertz Award (Germany), five first prizes and the Euphonie D’Or in the Bourges International Electroacoustic Music Awards (France), two first prizes in the International Rostrum for electroacoustic music and most recently the honorary Thomas Seelig Fixed Media Award for 2023. She collaborates with performers, visual artists, architects and scientists and is also active in performance, education and research.

Nathan Brown

Host: Jed Rasula (English)
Residency Date: March 2022

Marion Wynne-Davies

Host: Sujata Iyengar (English)
Residency Date: April 2021

Marion Wynne-Davies, professor of English literature at the University of Surrey delivered two remote presentations, both open to the public. The first was a virtual “master-class” with undergraduate students on “How Margaret Cavendish Mapped a Blazing World.” Wynne-Davies also presented a talk on “Ease and Dis-Ease in 1 Henry IV” to graduate students in English 8300.

Wynne-Davies was responsible for establishing English as a discipline at the University of Surrey. She also one of the first to pioneer the use of placements in English Literature and Creative Writing degrees in the UK. She is known internationally for her path-breaking work on Renaissance women dramatists.

Lisa Wolpe

Host: Ray Paolino (Theatre and Film Studies)
Residency Date: February 2021

Lisa Wolpe, actor/director and internationally renowned theatre artist, is known as a leader of the movement for gender parity and diversity in the arts with a focus on Shakespeare and gender-neutral casting. Wolpe delivered a two-hour presentation which included a one hour-long video performance of her one-person show, Shakespeare and the Alchemy of Gender, which has toured the U.S. and Europe. In addition, she held a one-hour live discussion with students and faculty and the wider UGA community.

Wolpe’s acting work has been seen at PlayMakers Rep, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Utah Shakespeare Festival, TheaterWorks, Orlando Shakespeare Theater, and Berkeley Repertory Company among others. She has directed and adapted Shakespeare plays for decades, and has taught Shakespeare at NYU, Emerson, UCLA, USC, Cal Poly Pomona, Whittier College, ACT San Francisco, Boston University, MIT, the American Shakespeare Center, University of Colorado, Boulder, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, King’s College, and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London.

Sharon Rostorf-Zamir

Host: Stephanie Tingler (Hugh Hodgson School of Music)
Residency Date: October 2019

Sharon Rostorf-Zamir, Professor of Voice from the Buchmann-Metha School of Music at Tel Aviv University, visited campus as a Willson Center Short-Term Visiting Fellow. In preparation for her visit, five student participants studied pieces composed by Israeli composers.

Rostorf-Zamir engaged in master classes and rehearsals in preparation for the student performance. Much of her visit was devoted to undergraduates, as well as both graduates and undergraduate students for the Opera master classes. The recital was well attended by members of the local community.

Sebastian Kaempf

Host: Roger Stahl (Communications Studies)
Residency Date: November 2019

“The Geopolitics of Cyberspace: Global Political Trends and Their Impact on Security, Privacy and Human Rights,” Sebastian Kaempf, senior lecturer in peace and conflict studies in the School of Political Science and International Studies at the University of Queensland (Australia).

Kaempf’s latest book, Saving Soldiers or Civilians?, was published with Cambridge University Press. He is also the convener of the free, open, online course “MediaWarX: Global Media, War and Technology.”

In this talk, Kaempf analyzed transformative effects that the Internet, social media apps, and cloud computing have had on societies and human beings. In particular, he looked at the original ideals underpinning cyberspace before focusing on three broad social trends that are affecting cyberspace today and how they are impacting on privacy, human rights, and freedom of speech: 1) the growing role of the state in cyberspace and the securitization of cyberspace; 2) the growth of a global market for cyberarms; and 3) the changing demographics of cyberspace. These developments, he argued, do not bode well for the future of the Internet, privacy, and human rights and therefore require each of us to change our attitude towards the information technology we are using on a daily basis.

Michael Kress

Host: James Enos (Lamar Dodd School of Art)
Residency Date: October 2018

Michael Kress is a conceptual and participation artist living and working in Hamburg, Germany. The focus of his work is to explore semiotics and language as normative moments in the construction of media-identities. Since 2004 Kress has been examining these “identities” as spatial imaginaries evidenced within films of the 1960s such as Lawrence of Arabia. His practice uses different media such as video, drawing, writing, sound and photography to expose conceptions of place and site as forms of conversation.

Sponsored by the Willson Center Short Term Fellowship, Kress will explore an Athens iteration of his 2014 Yokohama, Japan public participation work ADORE while in residence at UGA. Working with students, local artists, and musicians as interlocutors, Kress will host video and conversational-photography workshops exploring how “pop music like rock, blues, soul, or punk provides a first contact to one’s own aesthetic self-definition, as a kind of a pop ID.”

In Athens, Kress is uniquely interested in working with undergraduate and graduate students to embrace global POP phenomena as a connective material for gauging seemingly distant hinterland-urban dependencies. Kress hopes to include these new student collaborations as North American consequences, expanding upon the work of HyperCultural Passengers, which asks:

“What can art and culture mean as part of a world of simultaneity in which tourists from the north bathe in the southern seas while enjoying a year’s vacation, while deprived escaped fugitives in identical waters go on a fatal journey? What does culture promise if their mobility shortens distances in supersonic speed and their places coincide in time? What is culture from the non-European perspective of the East and the South in times of global digital exchange of data and information? How can we reconcile ideas such as art, culture, aesthetics in a way that breaks up identity solidifications?”

Kenneth Holmqvist

Host: Victoria Hasko (Hugh Hodgson School of Music)
Residency Date: September 2018

Kenneth Holmqvist is a professor at North-West University, South Africa, at the Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic and is currently a guest professor at Regensburg University, Germany. Holmqvist has worked with eye-movement research since 1995. He has conducted a long series of innovative research projects using eye-trackers, from mental imagery to decision making, reading, air traffic control, and eye movements in animals.

Most people report having mental imagery when listening to speech, reading text or just remembering something, yet it has been notoriously difficult to study these mental images. A large body of recent research has shown that spontaneous eye movements frequently occur when information is recalled from memory and that such gaze patterns closely overlap with the spatial configuration of the recalled information. This effect has been demonstrated for participants who encode visual scenes while looking at an empty screen as well as for those who listen to scene descriptions. It has been suggested that eye movements to blank spaces, or the processes driving them, function as “spatial indices,” that may assist in arranging the relevant parts of a visualized scene. In support of a functional role of imagery, impaired episodic memory performance has been reported in experiments where participants are restricted to look at a fixation cross during recall. Taken together, research on eye movements during memory retrieval and mental imagery shows the possibility of tracking the “mind’s eye” when the visuospatial configuration of an episodic memory is re-constructed, and there is substantial evidence that this effect occurs irrespective of whether such a memory trace is based on textual, visual or verbal information. This talk closes by discussing the applications of such research, including possibilities to retrieve images through automatic algorithms that record eye movements during thought processes.

This event is hosted by Victoria Hasko, associate professor of language and literacy education, program chair of the TESOL and World Language Education Program, and director of the UGA Russian Flagship Program.

William Westney

Host: Pete Jutras (Hugh Hodgson School of Music)
Residency Date: February 2018

William Westney, professor of piano at Texas Tech University and has been awarded that school’s highest teaching honor. Author of The Perfect Wrong Note, and pioneer of the groundbreaking “Un-Master Class.” Westney’s work has been described as “fascinating” by The New York Times and has been presented at top music schools around the world.

Westney presented a series of sessions and master classes at the Hugh Hodgson School of Music as part of the Hugh Hodgson School of Music’s biannual Piano Pedagogy Symposium. He also participated in a join interdisciplinary session with the Horn Workshop. These sessions covered a variety of engaging and thought-provoking talks on music learning and teaching.

Will Alexander

Host: Jed Rasula (English)
Residency Date: January 2018

Will Alexander works in multiple genres. In addition to being a poet, he is also a novelist, essayist, aphorist, playwright, philosopher, visual artist, and pianist. His books include Asia and Haiti, The Sri Lankan Loxodrome, and Compression and Purity. His honors and awards include a Whiting Fellowship for Poetry, a California Arts Council Fellowship and the 2016 Jackson Poetry Prize.

Alexander gave a public reading at Ciné and also took part in a public conversation with Ideas for Creative Exploration (ICE) in the Lamar Dodd School of Art. His visit was supported by the Willson Center and the Creative Writing Program in the department of English.

John Freyer

Host: Marni Shindelman (Photography and Graphic Design)
Residency Date: November 13-16, 2017

John Freyer’s art is rooted in social practice, specifically the exchange of goods to encourage experience.  In his latest project Hot Coffee: Recovery Roast, Freyer has built a mobile coffee bike that moves across campus; encouraging conversations between community members. In an age of short text messages and emails, Freyer’s work emphasizes face-to-face communication as community building and spaces for healthier individuals and families. He sees the local artisan as an integral aspect of community economic and social development.  

Sponsored by a Willson Center Short Term Fellowship, the project will begin with students in both the Lamar Dodd School of Art and the College Recovery Center. Students will work with 1000 Faces Coffee to develop a blend reminiscent of the types of connections they long for, and specific to the UGA community. Students will then learn the art of communication and conversation from Freyer, through workshops and exercises he has developed to prepare them to drive the bike. Like an ancient tea ceremony, Freyer will train them in the art of the pour over. Students will then ride the bike around UGA campus for three days in various shifts, pursuing the art of the conversation.

John Freyer’s work has been reviewed in The New Yorker, The Sunday London Times, Artforum, Print Magazine and NBC’s The Today Show. Freyer is a Fulbright Scholar, a Macdowell Colony Fellow and was an Artist in Residence at Light Work and the Fannon Center, Doha, Qatar. Freyer has brought his social practice projects – Free Ice Water, Free Hot Coffee and Free Hot Supper to the TEDx stage, has exhibited at Mixed Greens Gallery in New York, the Liverpool Biennial Fringe in Liverpool, UK and is currently a Tate Exchange Associate at the Tate Modern in London.

Neal Lester

Host: Jonathan Evans (English)
Residency Date: September 13-17, 2016

Neal Lester is the Founding Director of Arizona State University’s award-winning initiative Project Humanities, as well as holding the titles of Foundation Professor of English, Dean’s Distinguished Professor of English, Parents Association Professor of the Year, and Arizona Humanities Council Distinguished Public Scholar. His research interests include African American literature and culture: children’s literature, folklore and popular culture, black/white interracial intimacies in American culture, African American women writers, black masculinities, the N-word, and the gender and race politics of hair.

His visit to UGA was sponsored by the Willson Center, DIG Fellowship, the department of English, the Linguistics Society at UGA, the Graduate School, the Linguistics Program, the Creative Writing Program, the Georgia Chapter of the NAACP, the Special Collections Libraries, the Grady College of Journalism, the Panhellenic Council, and the Economic Justice Coalition of Athens.

Melinda Wagner

Host: Peter Van Zandt Lane (Hugh Hodgson School of Music)
Residency Date: November 14-18, 2016

Melinda Wagner achieved widespread attention when her colorful Concerto for Flute, Strings, and Percussion was awarded the 1999 Pulitzer Prize in Music. Since then, major compositions have included her Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra, for Joseph Alessi and the New York Philharmonic, and a piano concerto, Extremity of Sky, commissioned by the Chicago Symphony for Emanuel Ax. She joined the composition faculty at Juilliard in Fall, 2016. In the composer’s words:

“Music offers composers an immeasurably rich and generous sonic landscape in which to explore the ʻlife storyʼ of each musical idea—its dramas, intrigues, joys and sorrows—a life. I strive to find various and persuasive ways of moving through the resulting temporal narrative, and to traverse a wide spectrum of expression and color on the way.”

Wagner attended performances by the Hodgson Wind Ensemble and Rote Hund Muzik (UGA Contemporary Chamber Ensemble), held master classes with composition students, and spoke on her work at the Roger and Phyllis Dancz Center for New Music.

Tom Gunning

Host: Nell Andrew (Lamar Dodd School of Art); Co-Sponsor Susan Rosenbaum (Department of English)
Residency Date: January 26-29, 2016

Tom Gunning is among the leading scholars of film in the United States and the Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor of Art History and Cinema and Media Studies at the University of Chicago.  In over one hundred publications, Gunning has concentrated on early cinema (from its pre-history through the World Wars). Interest in Gunning’s work is widely interdisciplinary for he has sought to define, through more than 100 publications, the cinema growing in its early years alongside a new culture of modernity. He has written two award-winning books on the major filmmakers Fritz Lang and D. W. Griffith, and is the recipient of numerous honors including an Andrew A. Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award (2009), election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2010), and the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Distinguished Career Achievement Award (2015).

Gunning will participate in a Cinema Roundtable and engage with students and faculty in art history and film. He will also work with faculty in the Interdisciplinary Modernisms Faculty Research Cluster.

Volvox Labs (VVOX)

Host: Eric Marty (School of Marine Programs); Co-sponsor: Lynn Boland (Georgia Museum of Art)
Residency Date: March 28 – April 1, 2016; Exhibit Dates March 31 – June 19

Led by owner and Creative Director Kamil Nawratil, Volvox embraces projects from a wide range of forward-thinking clients. VVOX’s work transcends physical architecture, creating engaging interactive spaces with technology to uniquely raise brand awareness, engage consumers in the real world, enhance festival and conference activations, retail environments, and increase interactivity and function within office and community spaces.

Classic City New Music Festival

Host: Peter Lane and Adrian Childs (Hugh Hodgson School of Music)
Residency Date: April 4-16, 2016
Location: Hugh Hodgson School of Music, Performing Arts Center

The Roger and Phyllis Dancz Center for New Music, with support from the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, will host a week-long festival of new music. The Classic City New Music Festival will feature chamber and electroacoustic recitals, guest performances, workshops, and discussions. Featured guests include Boston-based bass clarinet and marimba duo Transient Canvas, and acclaimed electroacoustic pianist and composer Keith Kirchoff.

The festival will include a composition seminar featuring a panel discussion with Transient Canvas and pianist Keith Kirchoff in a discussion moderated by members of the Student Composers Association. The panel will discuss what goes into developing a career as highly active and touring performers specializing in contemporary music, and what professional musicians seek in the commissioning of new works by living composers.

Christopher Hager

Host: Cody Marrs (Department of English)
Residency Date: October 19-22, 2015
Location: Park Hall, Hargrett Special Collections Library (2nd Floor)

Christopher Hager, Associate Professor of English at Trinity College, is one of the preeminent young scholars of nineteenth-century African American history and culture. His first book, “Word by Word: Emancipation and the Act of Writing,” was published by Harvard University Press in 2013, and was a finalist for both the Frederick Douglass Prize and the Gilder Lehrman Prize, which are awarded annually to the best book on slavery and the Civil War era (respectively). He is the recipient of prestigious, year-long fellowships from both the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies. He has also published articles in the field’s top journals, including “American Literature” and “J19: The Journal of Nineteenth-Century Americanists,” and has work forthcoming in “The Cambridge History of the American Civil War,” “Teaching the Literatures of the American Civil War,” “Literary Cultures of the Civil War,” and other venues.

Alexandre Munz

Host: Lisa Fusillo (Department of Dance)
Residency Date: March 5, 2:15 pm
Location: New Dance Theatre, Dance Building

Prior to becoming Principal Soloist at the Berlin Opera Ballet, Alexandre Munz trained at the Paris Opera Ballet School in the early 80’s before the emergence of somatic practices and modern dance in France. Ten years later, after an intense international career, Munz leads in the cutting edge of contemporary international somatic practices. He initially created S.A.F.E.™ – Spine Advanced Functional Empowerment – to self-heal from chronic pathologies and migraines developed during ballet training.

Now, as a choreographer and educator, his innovative S.A.F.E.™ pedagogy has received a grant from the French Ministry of Culture to implement a major research and development project in partnership with French national institutes, gathering health experts, high-level dancers and athletes. A scientific treatise of this work is archived at the Centre National de la Danse in Paris and has been made available to the Slippery Rock University Department of Dance.

Mequitta Ahuja

Host: Katie Geha (Lamar Dodd School of Art)
Residency Date: January 27, 2 pm
Location: Lamar Dodd School of Art, room N150

Ahuja is an artist who lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland. She received an MFA from UIC in 2003, mentored by Kerry James Marshall. Her work has been exhibited across the U.S as well as in Paris, Brussels, Berlin, India and Dubai. Ahuja has had solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago’s 12X12, Lawndale Art Center in Houston, TX, BravinLee Programs in New York and Nathalie Obadia Gallery in Paris, France. Group exhibitions include: Global Feminisms at the Brooklyn Museum, Houston Collects African American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Poets and Painters at the Ulrich Museum in Wichita, KS, “Undercover” at Spelman College Museum of Fine Art and Usable Pasts at the Studio Museum in Harlem. In addition to exhibition catalogues, Ahuja’s work has appeared in Modern Painters, March 2007 and Art News, February 2007. Ahuja is the recipient of a 2011 Tiffany Foundation Award, a 2009 Joan Mitchell Award, and a 2008 Houton Artadia Prize. Her work is included in several  public collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Red Priest

Host: Caitlin Hubbard (Performing Arts Center)
Performance Date: November 12, 8 pm
Location: Hodgson Concert Hall, Performing Arts Center

Red Priest is the only early music group in the world to have been compared in the press to the Rolling Stones, Jackson Pollock, the Marx Brothers, Spike Jones and the Cirque du Soleil. This extraordinary acoustic foursome has been described by music critics as ‘visionary and heretical’, ‘outrageous yet compulsive’, ‘wholly irreverent and highly enlightened’, ‘completely wild and deeply imaginative’, with a ‘red-hot wicked sense of humor’ and a ‘break-all-rules, rock-chamber concert approach to early music’.

Stephen Burns

Host: Brandon Craswell (Hugh Hodgson School of Music)
Residency: November 10 – November 14, 2014
Performance Date: November 14, 8 pm
Location: Ramsey Concert Hall, Hugh Hodgson School of Music

Stephen Burns is a trumpeter, conductor, composer and teacher educated at the Juilliard School, with post-graduate studies in Paris, Ottawa, and Chicago with legendary teachers Pierre Thibaud, Jorma Panula, and Arnold Jacobs. Winner of the Young Concert Artists International Auditions and the Maurice André International Competition, Stephen is the Founder and Artistic Director of Fulcrum Point New Music Project, as well as visiting lecturer at Northwestern University and Amici della Musica, Firenze.

Amanda Concha-Holmes

Host: Meredith Welch-Devine (Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies)
Residency: October 20 – October 24, 2014

Amanda Concha-Holmes’ work as a visual and ecological anthropologist embraces the notion of applied documentary filmmaking to further human understanding of and collaboration in multispecies encounters through evocative ethnography. Specifically, she is developing a conceptual framework for an applied, feminist, postcolonial visual anthropology that is dedicated to reframing methodological techniques. She promotes the use of art, sound, videography and an inclination for anthropological insight to improve collaborative conservation projects that raise awareness of intersections of power dynamics that include race, region, gender, class and others elements of human-ecological relationships that are integral and must be visible in policy-making decisions and interpretations of geographical space.

Vladimir Ivanov

Host: Levon Ambartsumian (Hugh Hodgson School of Music)
Residency: October 31 – November 9, 2013
Performance Date: November 5, 8 pm
Location: Hodgson Hall, Performing Arts Center

Vladimir Ivanov is the Dean of the Orchestral Department at the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory and serves as the head of the Violin Department. He also holds the honor of being a People’s Artist of Russia. His repertoire includes a few hundred works of solo and chamber music in all genres. In addition to serving as a jury member in many international music competitions, he tours and holds master classes in Russia and abroad, traveling to Germany, Switzerland, Finland, Austria, the United States, Denmark, Italy, South Korea, North Korea, Portugal, and Greece.

David Geringas

Host: David Starkweather (Hugh Hodgson School of Music)
Residency: January 21 – January 23, 2013
Performance date: January 21, 8 pm
Location: Ramsey Concert Hall

David Geringas was the gold medal winner of the Tchaikovsky International Competition in 1970.  A protégé of Rostropovich, he is now the most sought-after cello teacher in Europe.  His many recordings and performances demonstrate beautiful sound and beautifully expressive phrasing.  Today Mr. Geringas is one of the most outstanding cellists on the international concert stage.

David Geringas will perform on January 21 at 8 pm and will be joined for this recital by pianist Ian Fountain. The event is part of the Franklin College Chamber Music Series. He will hold master classes on January 22 and 23.

Kopelman String Quartet

Host: Levon Ambartsumian (Hugh Hodgson School of Music)
Residency: October 2 – 10, 2012
Concert date: October 7, 2012, 3 pm
Location: Hodgson Hall, Performing Arts Center

The Kopelman Quartet is one of the major string quartets of the world and bears an extraordinary legacy in chamber music. Founded a decade ago by graduates of the Moscow Conservatoire, the quartet is steeped in the standards and style of the classic Russian school. Their performances are marked by a rich inheritance of technical excellence, lyricism, grace, and musical integrity. While on campus, the Quartet will lead individual master-classes and quartet master-classes and hold meetings with UGA Faculty and students. The Quartet will give the Payne Memorial Concert as part of the Franklin College Chamber Music Series on Sunday, October 7 at 3 pm in Hodgson Concert Hall.

Liz Lerman

Host: Mark Callahan (Lamar Dodd School of Art and ICE [Ideas for Creative Exploration])
Residency: October 29 – November 2, 2012
Lecture: “Hiking the Horizontal: Making Rules, Breaking Rules”
Date: Thursday, November 1, 4 pm
Location: Room 248, Miller Learning Center

ICE is pleased to host Liz Lerman for a weeklong residency at UGA, sponsored by the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, Department of Dance, Department of Theatre and Film Studies, Lamar Dodd School of Art, and Hodgson School of Music. The program is also supported in part by the President’s Venture Fund through the generous gifts of the University of Georgia Partners and other donors.

Liz Lerman is a visionary choreographer, performer, educator, and writer best known for organizing highly collaborative works that cut across traditional disciplines and communities. She has been the recipient of numerous honors, including a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship and a United States Artists Ford Fellowship. Her work has been commissioned by the Lincoln Center, American Dance Festival, Harvard Law School, and the Kennedy Center among many others. Her recent work, “The Matter of Origins,” examines the question of beginnings through dance, media, and innovative formats for conversation supported by the National Science Foundation.

Marcus Bugler

Host: Joan Buttram (Department of Dance)
Residency: April 4 – 6, 2013 in connection with the Spring Dance Concert, Department of Dance

Marcus Bugler is executive dance director and choreographer for Glenbrook Studios®, a motion picture production and distribution company based in Las Vegas, Nevada, and Instructor and Choreographer for Nevada Ballet Theatre and Cirque du Soleil’s production of Viva Elvis. Bugler is recognized for his skill in training actors and singers to be theatrical movers on stage and screen.