Showing posts with label utep. Show all posts
Showing posts with label utep. Show all posts
5.15.2009
5.09.2009
Doubt
A couple weeks ago, my wife and I made our first trip to the Wise Family Theater on the UTEP campus. One of her former students, Alejandra, is now a theater major at UTEP, focusing on production and stage management (not surprisingly, she has studiously avoided becoming my student too...). The department was in its second week of showing the play "Doubt," and as stage manager for this production, Alejandra graciously gave us tickets to see the play. I could not have been more impressed.
I'll start with the design of the posters that graced campus in the last few weeks. I'm not sure who designed them, but they literally graced our campus, making a clean, striking, and evocative visual argument advertising the event. I noticed the posters on several occasions, admiring the sparse style even before I knew of Alejandra's involvement with the production.
When we arrived the night of the play and took our seats, I was stunned by the design and quality of the set itself--a design which clearly echoed the impressive stylistics of the posters. I wish that I had taken my camera, or even made time to visit the next day, as the atmosphere was expertly shaped by three powerful objects suspended high above the stage: a rustic and empty doorframe to the right, a leafless and wicked tree, hanging prone to the left, and a beautiful round stained glass window in the center, shining brilliant colors on the stage at various points during the performance.
The acting was phenomenal, the story was gripping and thought-provoking, and the production, of course, was flawless. It was hard to believe that this was Alejandra's first major turn at stage direction. I am not easy to impress, and having never previously attended a production on campus, I will admit that my expectations were fairly low. I was wrong to have such an attitude. In short, the play was brilliant.
After the play, we visited with Alejandra, and she was excited to share her copy of the script with me. I was, of course, fascinated by her interaction with the document, how her writing and naming of scenes co-structured the course of the production. We are very proud to be Miners, and very proud of Alejandra. She's got a bright future...
I'll start with the design of the posters that graced campus in the last few weeks. I'm not sure who designed them, but they literally graced our campus, making a clean, striking, and evocative visual argument advertising the event. I noticed the posters on several occasions, admiring the sparse style even before I knew of Alejandra's involvement with the production.
When we arrived the night of the play and took our seats, I was stunned by the design and quality of the set itself--a design which clearly echoed the impressive stylistics of the posters. I wish that I had taken my camera, or even made time to visit the next day, as the atmosphere was expertly shaped by three powerful objects suspended high above the stage: a rustic and empty doorframe to the right, a leafless and wicked tree, hanging prone to the left, and a beautiful round stained glass window in the center, shining brilliant colors on the stage at various points during the performance.
The acting was phenomenal, the story was gripping and thought-provoking, and the production, of course, was flawless. It was hard to believe that this was Alejandra's first major turn at stage direction. I am not easy to impress, and having never previously attended a production on campus, I will admit that my expectations were fairly low. I was wrong to have such an attitude. In short, the play was brilliant.
After the play, we visited with Alejandra, and she was excited to share her copy of the script with me. I was, of course, fascinated by her interaction with the document, how her writing and naming of scenes co-structured the course of the production. We are very proud to be Miners, and very proud of Alejandra. She's got a bright future...
4.04.2009
Frontera Retórica: Recap and Video
Frontera Retórica, UTEP's student chapter of the Rhetoric Society of America, recently completed its second annual Spring Symposium. I shot some rather haphazard video of the speaking events, and have cobbled that together here for your viewing pleasure.
The first panel highlighted undergraduate research in Rhetoric and Professional Communication, with presentations from (in order) Rene Luna, Jonathan Saldivar, and Nadia Ramirez. More detailed information on the fantastic work of these students can be found on Slideshare, where Rene, Jonathan, Nadia, and I had previously uploaded our panel proposal for the Southwest/Texas PCA/ACA conference. By all accounts, this was a fantastic, informative, and inspiring panel, one for which our students should be very proud!
The undergraduate panel was followed by presentations from three of the dissertating doctoral candidates in UTEP's nationally recognized Rhetoric and Writing Studies program. Hector Carbajal began the graduate panel with a thorough and lucid study of the "rise, fall, and re-invention of memory in the history of rhetoric." Christie Daniels, current president of Frontera Retórica, discussed her dissertation research in a presentation titled "Remapping Evil: Locating, Spatializing, and Depicting Morality." I was the last to present, and though I didn't shoot any video of myself (you're not missing anything!), the slides for my talk can be found below.
After a brief intermission of good food and even better discussion, we heard the excellent keynote presentation of Bill Hart-Davidson, co-director of the WIDE Research Center at Michigan State University. Dr. Hart-Davidson discussed his work on the "Social Writing Application Platform" (SWAP), a project developed at WIDE that can be used to "coordinate the distributed work of multiple writers" in an organizational setting. Beyond his thought-provoking keynote presentation, we simply had a great time with Bill during his visit, from dinner at L&J's to the daytrip to Old Mesilla. He's a wonderful representative of both Michigan State and the entire discipline!
A couple of notes on the video and the symposium: Carloyn Drapes and I live-tweeted Bill's talk, and the collection of those tweets can be found here. This video is intended as a representation of the full event, hence the music and the lack of discussion. Perhaps next year we'll live stream the events so that we can more fully share the scholarly discussions. Finally, I should note that I didn't shoot video of the entire space--there were easily 5 or 6 times the number of attendees that can be seen in this video. Enjoy!
The first panel highlighted undergraduate research in Rhetoric and Professional Communication, with presentations from (in order) Rene Luna, Jonathan Saldivar, and Nadia Ramirez. More detailed information on the fantastic work of these students can be found on Slideshare, where Rene, Jonathan, Nadia, and I had previously uploaded our panel proposal for the Southwest/Texas PCA/ACA conference. By all accounts, this was a fantastic, informative, and inspiring panel, one for which our students should be very proud!
The undergraduate panel was followed by presentations from three of the dissertating doctoral candidates in UTEP's nationally recognized Rhetoric and Writing Studies program. Hector Carbajal began the graduate panel with a thorough and lucid study of the "rise, fall, and re-invention of memory in the history of rhetoric." Christie Daniels, current president of Frontera Retórica, discussed her dissertation research in a presentation titled "Remapping Evil: Locating, Spatializing, and Depicting Morality." I was the last to present, and though I didn't shoot any video of myself (you're not missing anything!), the slides for my talk can be found below.
After a brief intermission of good food and even better discussion, we heard the excellent keynote presentation of Bill Hart-Davidson, co-director of the WIDE Research Center at Michigan State University. Dr. Hart-Davidson discussed his work on the "Social Writing Application Platform" (SWAP), a project developed at WIDE that can be used to "coordinate the distributed work of multiple writers" in an organizational setting. Beyond his thought-provoking keynote presentation, we simply had a great time with Bill during his visit, from dinner at L&J's to the daytrip to Old Mesilla. He's a wonderful representative of both Michigan State and the entire discipline!
A couple of notes on the video and the symposium: Carloyn Drapes and I live-tweeted Bill's talk, and the collection of those tweets can be found here. This video is intended as a representation of the full event, hence the music and the lack of discussion. Perhaps next year we'll live stream the events so that we can more fully share the scholarly discussions. Finally, I should note that I didn't shoot video of the entire space--there were easily 5 or 6 times the number of attendees that can be seen in this video. Enjoy!
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