February 28, 2022
“Catalyst!” faculty research sessions start Friday
Faculty from the College of Arts and Media will share their current research during “First Friday” sessions beginning Friday, March 4.
The sessions offer faculty and students from across campus the opportunity to see what their peers and instructors are working on, said Richard Kelley, interim director in the School of Music. The sessions begin at 1 p.m. in Morris Library’s John G. Guyon Auditorium.
The presenters, with their topics and a brief description, are:
March 4 — Cody Brookshire, assistant professor, School of Music and School of Media Arts, “Tempo, Rhythm, and Process in ‘Piano Preludes, Vol. 1’.” Brookshire will share and discuss recently composed works from his collection of “Piano Preludes.” He will show novel approaches to tempo, rhythm, pulse, and time and how they are employed as a unifying theme in this collection, which also demonstrates how process-based composition techniques play an important role in setting trajectory, leading to interesting musical results.
April 1 — David Dillard, associate professor and graduate studies director, School of Music, “Unpacking Bel Canto: Exploring Musical and Poetic Structures.” Dillard’s research focuses on understanding the musico-dramatic structures underlying Italian opera in the early 19th century. Dillard said composers such as Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi were under tremendous pressure to craft their operas quickly. The presentation explores the “predetermined principles of composition and dramatic flow, which allowed for this frantic pace of work and appreciate the reasons why these operas still captivate contemporary audiences.”
April 1 — Lisa Brooten, associate professor, School of Media Arts, “Fighting informational autocracy: Lessons from Southeast Asia.” Brooten’s research looks at how “informational autocrats of different styles — from the defiant President Putin of Russia, to the bombastic President Duterte of the Philippines, to the quieter General Prayuth of Thailand — represent a newly re-branded form of dictatorship that relies on the manipulation of information and mimicking democracy rather than primarily on direct physical threat or coercion (although these leaders do revert to direct repression at times).” Brooten notes that “case studies of resistance to informational autocracy in Thailand and the Philippines help us examine the implications of this new authoritarian strategy for the US and other countries worldwide.”