Thursday, November 10, 2011
All events are on the University of Missouri - St. Louis Campus in the J.C. Penney Building..

Thursday, November 10, 2011 Women in the Arts Conference UMSL

 Susan Waller

Title: Posing Nude, Producing an Object, Performing a Subject: Cléo de Mérode, Alexandre Falguiére, and La Danseuse Thursday 9:30 JCP

 Dr. Susan Waller was awarded the Ph.D. in art history by Northwestern University in 1999. She is currently an Associate Professor in the department of Art and Art History at the University of Missouri-Saint Louis. She is a specialist in nineteenth century European art; her publications focus on issues of gender and the social aspects artistic production. They include two books: The Invention of the Model: Artists and Models in Paris, 1830-1870 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006) and Women Artists in the Modern Era: A Documentary History (Metuchen, NY and London: Scarecrow Press, 1991). Her other publications include essays in the Art Bulletin, Art History, History of Photography, Oxford Art Journal, Nineteenth Century Art Worldwide and Woman’s Art Journal. Currently she is working on two projects: a monographic study of the artist/model transaction in the French Third Republic and a co-edited volume of essays on immigrant artistic communities in Paris between 1870 and 1914. Her research has been supported by fellowships by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Association of University Women, the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the Social Science Research Council.
wallersu@umsl.edu

 

Dr. Yael Even
Title: Women and Fleas South and North of the Alps
Thursday 10:00 JCP

Professor Yael Even is an art historian who has been teaching courses in Renaissance and Baroque art at UM-St. Louis. Her current research focuses on visual literacy in 16 th-century Florence; it attempts to prove that so-called commoners had access to public images and could recognize and understand certain images of Greco-Roman subjects.

Yael Even studies Florentine art and society in the 15th and 16th centuries.  Her current interests are visual literacy in renaissance Florence; and public art, especially mythologized pageants and their role in familiarizing so-called ordinary citizens with Greco-Roman culture.   

Professor Even received her B.A. degree in Art History and English & American Literature from the Hebrew University; her M.A. degree in Art History from the Universite de Paris X, and her PhD in Art History from Columbia University.  As a doctoral candidate, she has taught classes in Introduction to Western Art at Columbia University. The courses that she has been teaching at the Art and Art History Department at the University of Missouri-St. Louis are: Renaissance Art and Architecture, Topics in Renaissance, Baroque Art and Architecture, the Artist and the City, The Nude, and Sophomore/Junior Seminar.

Professor Even is currently co-editing a special issue ( Exploration in Renaissance Culture) with Professor Liana Cheney.  She is a member of the editorial board of Women Arts Quarterly.  In 2011, Professor Even will present two papers in two respective conferences on the prevalence of ephemeral images of Bacchus for Pope Leo X’s formal entry to Florence. Her latest essays include, ““The Assault on Hercules’s Bride South and North of the Alps” Women and the Arts; “The Public’s Familiarization with Images of Heroic Rapes in Medicean Florence,” International Journal of Art and Society; and “Nessus’s Abduction of Deianira: A Subject for All Season ( Explorations in Renaissance Culture). 
yaeleven@umsl.edu

Break 10:30-11:00

Dr. Sally Ebest

Title: The End of an Era? Irish American Women Writers after 9/11 Thursday 11:00 JCP

 Dr. Sally Barr Ebest is Professor of English and Director of the Gender Studies Program at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where she teaches courses in Irish and Irish American women writers, feminist theory, and writing pedagogy.  Her publications include Too Smart to be Sentimental: Contemporary Irish American Women Writers (University of Notre Dame Press, 2008), Changing the Way We Teach (Southern Illinois University Press, 2005), and Reconciling Catholicism and Feminism? (University of Notre Dame Press, 2003).  Her presentation today is taken from her forthcoming book, The Banshees: A Literary History of Irish American Women Writers (Syracuse University Press, 2012).
sebest@umsl.edu

 

Liz Robbins

Title: Poetry from the Daughters of Second-Wave Feminists: Examining Still-Erect Gender Borders Thursday 11:30 JCP

 Liz Robbins' new manuscript, Play Button, won the 2010 Cider Press Review Book Award, judged by Patricia Smith. Her poems have appeared in Barrow Street, Cimarron Review, Greensboro Review, Harpur Palate, MARGIE, New Ohio Review, Puerto del Sol, and Rattle, and are forthcoming in Barn Owl Review, Bayou, Gargoyle, New York Quarterly, and Poet Lore. Poems from her first book, Hope, As the World Is a Scorpion Fish (Backwaters P), were featured on Garrison Keillor's The Writer's Almanac and Verse Daily. She's an assistant professor of creative writing at Flagler College in St. Augustine, FL, and presented her poems this past April at a New York Institute of Technology conference in Nanjing, China. lizrobbins@comcast.netERobbins1@flagler.edu

 

Mary Troy – Writer-in-Residence

Title: Writing out of Bewilderment, Stumbling Toward Truth Thursday 1:00 JCP

 Mary Troy is the author of 4 books of fiction: the novel Beauties (November 2010, BkMk Press) and three previous collections of short stories--Cookie Lily, The AlibiCafe and other stories, and Joe Baker Is Dead. Beauties won the USA book award for best book of literary fiction, and was a finalist for book of the year by ForeWord Reviews. It was on the small press best seller list for three months in a row. Cookie Lily won the Devil's Kitchen Reading Award for best book of prose in 2004, The AlibiCafe earned a rave review in the NY Times Book Review, and Joe Baker Is Dead was nominated for a PEN/Faulkner award. Mary has won a Nelson Algren award from the Chicago Tribune for a short story, and her nonfiction is collected in a many anthologies, including the award winning In The Middle of theMiddle West. Mary has just completed a 13 year stint as the first director of the UMSL MFA in Creative Writing program.
marytroy@umsl.edu

 

Jennifer Tappenden

Title: Processes to Overcome Literary Barriers Thursday 2:00 JCP

Jennifer Tappenden is the Founding Editor of Architrave Press and an MFA candidate in poetry at the University of Missouri – St. Louis.  Her interview (with Karen Lewis) of Thom Ward was featured at Poetry Daily. Her poems have appeared in The MacGuffin , The Cape Rock, Slipstream and elsewhere. By day she is also Data Manager for the Division of Public Health Sciences at Washington University School of Medicine. Architrave Press represents a new kind of periodical literature: poems printed as individual pages that allow readers to self-curate their own collection in the same way music lovers create playlists. Each page is printed on 5 ½” x 8” archival card stock using antique letterpress methods. The poem can then move freely through the world, maybe as an item for a bulletin board, as a postcard to a friend, as a bookmark… whatever the reader is inspired to do. They can be purchased individually or as part of a subscription (if you’d like to receive all poems in each edition). All of this is designed to catch the eyes of intelligent, artful readers who don’t yet realize there is poetry in the world they enjoy.
Jennifer_Tappenden@Yahoo.com

Janet Goddard

Title: Your Writing/Your Choice – Self-Publishing in 2011 Thursday 2:30 JCP

 Janet Goddard, fiction writer and instructor, has an MFA from the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and a Bachelor’s degree in English and Creative Writing Certificate from Washington University. Janet’s works include numerous short stories, a bit of poetry, essays, a recently published first novel, Shake the Middle Tree, and a musical libretto, The Mechanical Cat.

Janet’s short stories, “Beare’s Widow,” and “Old Tyme” have been recognized by the University of Missouri-St. Louis’ annual “Best Fiction” competition. Her story “I.A.C. Technical Support” was a finalist for Hourglass Books. The Associated Writing Programs recognized Janet’s creative non-fiction piece, “The Bee Weeks,” in their “New Beginnings” competition.

Janet has taught in a variety of venues around St. Louis. She served as creative writing Artist in Resident for Young Audiences of St. Louis, conducted creative writing workshops for teens for St. Louis Writer’s Workshop, and taught college level English and creative writing courses for Washington University, St. Louis Community Colleges at Meramec and Forest Park. Currently, Janet teaches high school English and Creative Writing at Visitation Academy.
spot28@sbcglobal.net

Break 3:00-3:30

Maria Teresa Balogh

Title: Poetry and Fiction Reading Thursday 3:30 JCP

 María Balogh is a bilingual, bicultural poet, fiction writer, dancer, doodler, and educator who was born in Barranquilla, Colombia and has lived in the United States off and on since 1985. She is an assistant teaching professor of Spanish at the University of Missouri-St. Louis since 2003. She is a fiction and poetry writer, and has an MFA in Creative Writing from UMSL, and an MA in TESOL/Foreign Languages from SIUC. She performs dances & reads poetry with Grupo Atlántico from the Missouri Folk Arts Program that helps promote the Hispanic Caribbean culture in Missouri. She writes in both English and Spanish, her native language. She reads & draws in her rare spare time. Her fiction in Spanish has been published in Más allá de las fronteras, cuento, Revista Bacanal, & Letras Femeninas. Her fiction in English has been published in Untamed Ink & Bellerive. Her poems in English have appeared in three issues of Bellerive, three issues of Untamed Ink, three issues of Bad Shoe, one issue of Literalchaos, plus an exhibit at the RAC Ferguson. Her poems in Spanish were published in Grafemas & Revista Bacanal.
baloghm@umsl.edu

 

 Lisa Zimmerman

Title: Poetry Reading Thursday 4:00 JCP

Lisa Zimmerman holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Washington University. Her poetry and fiction have appeared in the Colorado Review, Redbook, The Sun, River Styx, Poet Lore, Natural Bridge and Indiana Review, among other magazines, and in many anthologies. Her poetry has been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize. She has published two poetry chapbooks as well as the full-length collections How the Garden Looks from Here, winner of the 2004 Violet Reed Haas Poetry Award and The Light at the Edge of Everything (Anhinga Press, 2008). She is an Assistant Professor of English and teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Northern Colorado and has been the poet-in-residence at a number of K-12 schools. She lives in Fort Collins, Colorado with her family.
Lisa.Zimmerman@unco.edu

 

Dr. Beth Denisch – Composer-in-Residence

Title: The Music of Beth Densich Thursday 4:30 JCP

Beth Denisch’s music has been performed in Moscow, Russia and Bangkok, Thailand, at Jordan Hall in Boston, and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York, across the U.S.A., and in Canada, Scotland, Mexico, Greece, Ukraine, and China. It has received radio play and tracks are available online; CDs from Albany, Juxtab, and Interval record labels. Scores are published and/or distributed by Juxtab Music, ClearNote Publications, and TrevCo Music.

Denisch frequently draws inspiration from artists as well as authors such as Henry James in Sorrow and Tenderness, commissioned by the Handel and Haydn Society; and Jeanette Winterson, for Jordan and the Dog Woman, commissioned by the Equinox Chamber Players. Many ensembles and organizations have awarded Denisch including the Chamber Orchestra Kremlin in Moscow for Fire Mountain Intermezzo; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and Philadelphia Classical Symphony for The Singing Tree, inspired by the Maxfield Parrish painting; and the Composers Guild for Motherwell Lorca’s Bagpipe Lament (piano solo version). The PatsyLu Fund of Open Meadows Foundation, American Music Center, Our Bodies Ourselves, and Berklee and Simmons Colleges supported Denisch’s song cycle on women’s life cycle events, One Blazing Glance.

Denisch is Professor at Berklee College of Music and active in the Feminist Theory and Music organization. She was the founding director of the American Composers Forum New England and is Co-Chair of the Gender Research in Music and Education International organization ( B.M. North Texas State University; M.M and D.M.A. Boston University).

 

  • “…fierce rhythmic patterns,” Bernard Holland, New York Times
  • “... brimmed with personality and drive ...” Anthony Tommasini, The Boston Globe
  • ... wonderfully evocative ... simply splendid,” David Cleary, New Music Connoisseur beth@bethdenisch.com

 

Rosebud Ben-Oni

Title: Don’t Call it Returning: Non-Israeli Women Negotiating Public Spaces, Traditions and Homosexuality in Modern Day Jerusalem Thursday 5:00 JCP

 Rosebud Ben-Oni is a playwright at New Perspectives Theater; her new play Shamhat will be previewed in October 2011, part of their 20th Anniversary Season. Her play Drawn from Water will be produced by Thespian Productions in October 2011. Recently produced work include Untouchable ( The Bare Knuckle Theatre Festival); Quimera on the Storm (New Perspectives); Owless of Santa Clara (Snorks and Pins Productions); The Amaranthine Thread (Left Hip Productions); Conjoga (Thespian Productions) and Nikita. (Shotgun Theater Festival).

Ben-Oni’s short story “A Way out of the  Colonia ” won the Editor's Prize at Camera Obscura: A  Journal of Contemporary Literature and Photography, and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. In 2010, she gave a reading of her novel-in-progress The Imitation of Crying at the American Chamber of Commerce in Beijing. She has recent and upcoming work in Existere, Slice Magazine, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Arts & Letters, Maggid: A Journal of Jewish Literature and Men Undressed: Women Writers and the Male Sexual Experience. Ben-Oni is a co-editor for  Her Kind  at VIDA: Women in Literary Arts ; recently VIDA selected her essay “On Writing Quimera and other Fears” for their State of the Art features. newyorkrosebud@gmail.com

 

Angela Mitchell

Title: Reading of Short Fiction: “Animal Lovers” Thursday 5:30 JCP

Angela Mitchell is a graduate student in fiction in the MFA program of the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Her fiction has appeared in Colorado Review (as the 2009 Nelligan Prize winner); Arkansas Review: A journal of Delta Studies; and New South (as a runner up in their 2010 fiction contest). Her story, “Animal Lovers” received a special mention in the annual Pushcart anthology (2011, 35th edition). In addition, she was recently honored by The Riverfront Times as the literary arts winner of their 2011 MasterMind Award. She lives in suburban St. Louis with her husband and two young sons.

Dinner 6:00

 Chamber Music Concert with the Equinox Chamber Players and Friends 7:30pm at JCP Auditorium, University of Missouri-St. Louis

The Equinox Chamber Players perform a collaborative concert featuring a cast of all-female composers in honor of Women in the Arts -2011.  The program features works by Beth Denisch, Barbara Harbach and Cynthia Folio, and includes selected movements of by Gay Holmes Spears, Valerie Coleman and Gwyneth Walker. Guest percussionist Shane Williams performs with Equinox on Denisch’s Jordan and the Dog Woman, inspired by Jeanette Winterson's surrealistic novel, Sexing the Cherry.  Harbach's Freeing the Caged Bird, inspired by the lives and works of Maya Angelou, Kate Chopin, Sara Teasdale and Emily Hahn, is accompanied by introductions presented by scholar Kathleen Nigro.  The work was commissioned by the Equinox Chamber Players (2007).

Founded in 1999, the Equinox Chamber Players ensemble is one of Saint Louis’ most dynamic performing chamber groups. Their multi-cultural music crosses international boundaries while bridging the gap between classical music and storytelling. Equinox celebrates community life with commissioned works inspired by environmental surroundings, historical and present day culture, and everyday heroes of our community. The ensemble has been featured in the PBS documentary Continental Harmony, and has aired on PBS, NPR and local radio stations. They can be heard on Albany Records, Juxtab Music, and Starkland Records.  Equinox Chamber Players are proud take part in and celebrate Women for the Arts 2011.

 N’kosii Sikelel’ iAfrika

E. M. Sontonga    
arr. Valerie Coleman

 

Aphorisms          

  1. Good things, when short, are twice as good. (Baltazar Gracian)
  2. All rising to a great place is by a winding stair. (Sir Francis Bacon)
  3. Hope is a waking dream. (Aristotle)
  4. A man with a watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never sure. (Mark Twain)
  5. Plain clarity is better than ornate obscurity . (Mark Twain)
  6. You can straighten a worm, but the crook is in him and only waiting . (Mark Twain)
  7. What happens to the hole when the cheese is gone? (Bertold Brecht)

Cynthia Folio 

Freeing the Caged Bird  *

  • Maya Angelou 
  • Sara Teasdale
  • Kate Chopin
  • Emily Hahn

Guest Speaker, Dr. Kathleen Nigro

Barbara Harbach

Intermission

 

 

Synchronized Encounter ** (Encounters)

 

Gwyneth Walker

Remembering * (American Mosaic)

 

Gay Holmes Spears

Jordan and the Dog Woman *

  • I. The Pools at Wimbledon
  • II. Jordan the Sailor
  • III. The Pit
  • Interlude
  • 1V. Points of Light Dancing

Guest percussionist, W. Shane Williams
Commissioned by the Equinox Chamber Players
* Arranged for the Equinox Chamber Players by Gwyneth Wa
lker

 

Beth Denisch