Bogliasco Fellowship Recipients 2013 – 2014

Bogliasco Fellowship Recipients
2013 – 2014 Academic Year
DANCE:
Faye Driscoll –Artistic Director, Faye Driscoll Group – United States
Project: A “biography mash-up” that combines the life stories of the creator and the performers,
Thank You For Coming: Story forces the ritual of storytelling to the forefront of a rigorous
physically-driven performance work using dance, song and text.
Molissa Fenley – Artistic Director of Molissa Fenley and Dancers; Executive Director of Momenta
Foundation, Inc.; Professor of Dance, Mills College, Oakland, CA – United States
Project: Beginning the research and thinking that precedes and accompanies the choreography of a
new work. In thinking about what a new work will involve/ source/ create, Molissa will invariably
return to the presence of the sculptural body in both ancient Roman and Greek art. The sense of
the continuation of the human form from the ancient world to our contemporary time is always an
inspiration for her to explore new movement and dance phrasings.
Paula Josa-Jones –Artistic Director and Choreographer, Paula Josa-Jones Performance Works –
United States
Project: In Little Fictions & Ragged Memoirs, an evening-length suite of solo dances, each of the
dances is a fictionalized, embodied memoir.
Cosmin Manolescu – Choreographer and Artistic Director, Serial Paradise Company – Romania
Project: Mapping Bodies: Rethinking dance will research the theme of the emotional body: a
personal geography made of memories embodied on the skin, physical traumas and signs, and all
the histories that a body could tell.
Maria Helena Nurmela – Choreographer/Performer – Finland
Project: Creating her own choreographic language for her upcoming multidisciplinary work Women
in Woods, scheduled to premiere in 2014 in New York. Women in the Woods is a staged work for two
sopranos, flute, violin, viola da gamba and lute, with solo choreography and dance. Together with
stage director Crystal Manich and music director Jane Sheldon, Maria Helena intends to present an
ode to female experience, with a particular focus on matters of the heart.
Helen Simoneau – Choreographer/Performer – Canada
Project: Simoneau’s Québécois heritage and immigration to the United States in adulthood will
serve as the backdrop for the research and development of a new solo work. This work will delve
into the issues of assimilation, identity, and the willing erasure of the self.
FILM/VIDEO:
Juan Carlos Cremata – Filmmaker – Cuba
Leo Biaggi de Blasys Bogliasco Fellow
Project: Condom, a film about teenagers in contemporary Cuba, explores the lives of young people
between the ages of 15 and 18 and their relationship with sex, feelings, tolerance, and adult
experiences.
Shaun Irons – Artist – United States
Project: Part live performance, video installation, and interactive media lab, Keep Your Electric Eye
On Me is an interwoven exploration of transformation, dual realities, hysteria, and the desire for the
unattainable. Throughout this disturbing and atmospheric work, complex sonic vistas and spectral
mirages meld, collide and shimmer. (Project in collaboration with Lauren Petty).
Sandra Nettelbeck – Writer/director – Germany
Project: Demons at Bay, a story of love, loss and hope surrounding the fate of a small, scattered
group of people in modern day Berlin, struggling to get through the middle of life without losing
their grip.
Tiziana Panizza – Professor at the University of Chile, documentary maker – Chile
Project: Tierra Sola (Solitary Land), a documentary on Easter Island´s local jail, a unique community
of 12 inmates that will radically change with the construction of a modern facility. The
documentary will explore the paradox of incarceration on one of the most remote Islands in the
Pacific Ocean. During her residency, Tiziana will work on the final version of the script and the first
cut of the film.
Lauren Petty – Artist, Professor – United States
Project: Part live performance, video installation, and interactive media lab, Keep Your Electric Eye
On Me is an interwoven exploration of transformation, dual realities, hysteria, and the desire for the
unattainable. Throughout this disturbing and atmospheric work, complex sonic vistas and spectral
mirages meld, collide and shimmer. (Project in collaboration with Shaun Irons).
HUMANITIES SCHOLARSHIP:
Derek Attridge (Literature-Scholarship) – Professor of English and Related Literature – United
Kingdom
Project: The Work of Literature explores such questions as the status and value of the literary work,
including the role of metaphor, emotion, and cultural difference, and situates the author’s
arguments within the philosophical tradition of aesthetic enquiry.
Anne-Marie Baron (Literature Scholarship) – French essayist, movie critic, President of Société des
Amis d’Honoré de Balzac – France
Project: Anne-Marie Baron intends to work on a translation from Italian to French of Salvatore
Attal’s book L’Esoterismo biblico (1908). She will write a biographical, historical introduction about
his life and work as an Italian Jew during two wars, and a philosophical and literary commentary
about the book itself.
Dympna Callaghan (Literature-Scholarship) – William Safire Professor in Modern Letters and
Interim Director of the Humanities Center, Syracuse University – United States
Project: An interdisciplinary study of the phenomenon of religious intolerance in the works of
Shakespeare, Confronting Intolerance: Religious Conflict in Shakespeare Today will argue that the
poetic and dramatic means through which Shakespeare navigated the treacherous waters of
religious division in his own time can allow us the means to confront and address religious violence
in ours. (Project in collaboration with Lori Anne Ferrell)
William Carroll (Literature-Scholarship) – Professor of English, Boston University – United States
– Shakespeare Association of America Bogliasco Fellow
Project: The Tragedy of Genealogy: Shakespearean Drama 1595-1606 examines Shakespearean
drama as a theatrical response to, and intervention in, the conflicts surrounding monarchical
succession, considering as well how the idea of succession figures in the transitions of the family.
Lewis Cohen (Philosophy) – Professor, Tufts University School of Medicine – United States
Project: Lewis Cohen is writing a book for the general public about the death with dignity (assisted
dying) movement, and during his time in Bogliasco will be exploring its ethical issues.
Gerald Dworkin (Philosophy) – Distinguished Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, UC Davis – United
States
Project: Research into the nature and justification of lying and deception. When lying is wrong what
explains its wrongness? One answer is that lying interferes with, or limits, the autonomy of the
person lied to. The author believes that this is not true and will develop arguments to dispute this
perspective.
Lori Anne Ferrell (Literature-Scholarship) – Professor of Early Modern Literature and History and
Director of Early Modern Studies Program, Claremont Graduate University – United States
Project: An interdisciplinary study of the phenomenon of religious intolerance in the works of
Shakespeare, Confronting Intolerance: Religious Conflict in Shakespeare Today will argue that the
poetic and dramatic means through which Shakespeare navigated the treacherous waters of
religious division in his own time can allow us the means to confront and address religious violence
in ours. (Project in collaboration with Dympna Callaghan)
Glenda Gilmore (History) – Peter V. and C. Vann Woodward Professor of History, American
Studies, and African American Studies – United States
Project: Writing a book on the African American artist Romare Bearden and four generations of his
family that is grounded in the broad sweep of African American history from Emancipation to the
Civil Rights Movement. The work will interrogate the African American imaginary by using
Bearden's artworks as an archive in conjunction with textual sources.
Francesco Guidi Bruscoli (History) – Research Professor, Università degli studi di Firenze – Italy
Project: In The Datini letters from London (1388-1411), the author illuminates a key phase in the
trade relations between England and the Mediterranean world of the late Middle Ages via the
examination of 270 letters written by Italian merchants from London around the year 1400.
David Heymann (Architecture) – Harwell Hamilton Harris Regents Professor – United States
Project: Writing a book about the complex relationships between buildings and constructed
landscapes. At the Liguria Study Center, David will focus on the use of non-picturesque
compositional means to obtain picturesque compositional ends in the design and making of public
spaces.
Ben Kiernan (History) – A. Whitney Griswold Professor of History, Chair, Council on Southeast Asia
Studies, Director, Genocide Studies Program, Yale University – United States
Project: Completing an environmental history of Viet Nam, and writing a general history of
Cambodia from ancient times to the present, for the International Project on the Environmental
History of Cambodian Society. These long-range environmental histories study the interactions
between the Vietnamese and Khmer peoples, their lands, and their neighbors, including ethnic
minority groups, and Chinese and Western colonial rulers.
Alastair Minnis (Literature Scholarship) – Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English at Yale
University – United States
Project: Completion of a monograph entitled From Eden to Eternity: Creations of Paradise in LateMedieval Culture, which is about the ways in which Christian theologians and philosophers, poets
and artists created elaborate visions of paradise. This involved the investigation of humankind’s
ultimate happiness and true sources of pleasure, the ideal relationship between body and soul, and
the hierarchies which separated God from His creation, male from female, and humankind from
animal and plant life.
Toril Moi (Literature-Scholarship) – James B. Duke Professor of Literature and Romance Studies,
Duke University – Norway
Project: In What Can Literature Do? Simone de Beauvoir between Philosophy and Literature, an
examination of Simone de Beauvoir's literary thought, the author argues that Beauvoir’s
understanding of the relationship between philosophy and literature amounts to a vibrant defense
of the arts and humanities, a defense that we need more than ever.
Gerard Passannante (Literature Scholarship) – Associate Professor of English and Comparative
Literature, University of Maryland – United States
Project: Catastrophizing: On Reading Disastrously. This project examines what it means to read
disastrously—to infer a world or its end from a few scattered instances or clues, to make too much
of too little, something of nothing or almost nothing. From the ancient atomic imagination to the
disastrous rhythms of Leonardo, Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Hooke, Gerard will explore the ways
an emerging analogy between disastrous speculation and picturing an invisible world of matter
shaped an all-too-familiar habit.
François Specq (Literature Scholarship) – Professor of American Literature and Culture,
Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, Université de Lyon – France
Project: Final draft of Observations sur l’Etat de Virginie, the first modern French translation and
scholarly edition of Thomas Jefferson’s classic Notes on the State of Virginia.
LITERATURE:
Jessica Anthony – Lecturer, Bates College; MFA Faculty, University of Tampa – United States
Project: In Enter the Aardvark, a collection of four absurd American novellas, characters from Haiti,
Mongolia, Czechoslovakia and Virginia confront outlandish circumstances.
Germán Carrasco – Poet, Columnist in The Clinic, Editor for the University Diego Portales – Chile
Project: Poems based on Abraham’s refusal to sacrifice his son, reflecting the father and son’s
escape and wanderings around the globe.
Carlos Franz – Writer – Chile
Project: Final stages of the writing of a historical novel titled The nature of love.
Nicholas Havely – Emeritus Professor of English and Related Literature, University of York –
United Kingdom
Project: Apennine Excursions: Journeys on the Edge of Tuscany deals with a journey along the “the
spine of Italy” as it is today, and with the excursions and narratives of others who have followed or
crossed parts of it over time–from Franciscan friars in the Middle Ages to Resistance fighters of
World War II.
Brian Holton – Freelance Translator – United Kingdom
Project: The translation into English of Yang Lian's Narrative Poem, a book-length poem-sequence
matched to a series of photographs of the childhood and early life of this poet, who is widely
regarded as one of the most influential and important contemporary poets currently writing in
Chinese.
Paul Kane – Poet, Professor of English, Vassar College – United States
Project: Completing a new volume of poems, Triangulations, comprising lyrics, epigrams and
translations. The book turns upon a trope of taking measurements to deduce relative positions in a
territory or region.
Amanda Michalopoulou – Writer – Greece
Project: Working on new short stories, possibly interlinked. Amanda is very interested in
interconnected stories that create larger unities of meaning, but also work on their own.
Frederika Randall – Literary translator – Italy
Project: Essay on Confessions of an Italian (1867), Ippolito Nievo’s rousing and spirited classic set
in Italy’s Risorgimento, tracing the novel’s place in 19th century European literature and the reasons
for its striking contemporary appeal. To accompany Frederika’s translation of the Confessions, to be
published by Penguin UK in 2014.
MUSIC:
Charlotte Bray – Composer – Germany
Project: Charlotte Bray will be composing a 10 minute piece for cello and electronics, commissioned
by German-Korean cellist Isang Enders. Bray’s work takes inspiration from the element ‘water’; at
its core, an ardent attachment to the natural world.
Amit Gilutz – Visiting Lecturer, Cornell University – Israel
Project: A large-scale piece for guitar player, singing and performing on several guitars, combining
audience participation and prerecorded samples of speech. The piece explores themes of
nationalism and nostalgia, and the way collective historical memory (as well as musical memory) is
reflected and shaped by these themes.
Jorge Grossmann – Assistant Professor of Composition, Ithaca College, NY – Brazil
Project: Jorge Grossmann will be working on the orchestration of his Piano Concerto No. 2 and on a
new piece for U.K.-based Distractfold Ensemble, for flute, clarinet, violin, violoncello, piano,
percussion and electronics.
Alvin Singleton – Composer – United States
Edward T. Cone Bogliasco Fellow in Music
Project: A new composition for concert band of approximately 15 minutes in duration that will
premiere in the fall of 2014.
Lewis Spratlan – Composer; Peter R. Pouncey Professor of Music, Emeritus, Amherst College –
United States
Aaron Copland Bogliasco Fellow in Music
Project: Composing the first scene of Midi, an opera after Euripides’s Medea, set on a French
Caribbean island ca. 1930.
THEATER:
Doruntina Basha – Playwright – Kosovo
Project: In Breaking Through, a woman strives to break through the myth that encircles the events
that made her lose her long and beautiful braid, bringing forth the facts that her traditional
patriarchal family cannot face.
Ms. Bolaji Odofin – Writer – Nigeria
Leo Biaggi de Blasys Bogliasco Fellow
Project: A new theatrical play, Uncommon Purity pursues themes of class and inner conflict, and the
disparities between who we think we are and what altered circumstances reveal us to be.
Ivan Talijancic –Founder and Artistic Co-Director, WaxFactory – Croatia
Project: 416 MINUTES is an originally devised cross-platform project, conceived and directed for
the New York based performance group, WaxFactory. It is being simultaneously developed as a
feature film and a site-specific installation/performance employing cinematic techniques in front of
a live audience.
Basil Twist – Artistic Director, Tandem Otter Productions – United States
Project: Basil will focus on the research and development of his new stage show; “The Erotic
Project".
VISUAL ARTS:
Ellen Altfest – Visual Artist – United States
New Museum Bogliasco Fellow in Visual Arts
Project: The creation of a series of intimate, tactile watercolors of natural objects in the Ligurian
landscape.
Tania Blanco –Visual Artist – Spain
Project: The concepts that will shape this new painting project depart from Michel Foucault’s
thoughts on the idea of social control over the body and his vision of the origin and development of
social medicine as a kind of bio-politics.
Mary Flanagan – Sherman Fairchild Distinguished Professor in the Emerging Field of Digital
Humanities – United States
Project: Reinventing her father's inventions from his collected papers and writing about her
exploration in the form of a book-manuscript.
Jean Pierre Giovanelli – Artist, Architect – France
Project: China Food. China’s emergence as a global power with influence over our activities and
thoughts presents a historical transformation that is almost as significant as the development of
computers and nanotechnology. We are becoming China’s food. The project consists of employing
Chinese symbols to create a metaphorical presentation of material, visual and aural elements,
raising questions about the perception of these phenomena that are modifying our thoughts and
actions.
Anne Martin – Professor of Art, John Burroughs School – United States
John Burroughs Bogliasco Fellow
Project: The creation of a body of sculptural work in bronze that explores the horizontal movement
and muscularity of the surrounding Ligurian landscape.
Liliana Beatriz Menéndez – Visual Artist – Argentina
Project: Word´s landscapes. Through drawings, Liliana will work on the relationship between
images and words. By using her own handwriting and representations of anatomic sections of the
organs of the body, of the taxonomy of flowers, seeds, stems, and roots, she will research when
precisely the letter becomes image, and when the image becomes word.
Alice Miceli – Visual Artist – Brazil
Project: Applying investigative travel and historical research to chart the virtual, physical and
cultural manifestations of trauma inflicted on social and natural landscapes, In Depth (landmines)
will focus on photographic representations of landscape, particularly looking into the space of
landmine fields.
Bonnie Rychlak – Visiting Assistant Professor, Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY – United States
Project: Her plan of work will involve compiling photographic documentation of ancient and
contemporary artifacts, from distressed classical sculptures to urban public works such as sewer
drains, excess water troughs and other civic utility appliances. The photographs will be translated
into drawings that will outline subsequent carved wax sculptures.
David Schorr – Professor of Art, Wesleyan University – United States
Project: Boulevards, a collection of new paintings that explore how early memories can be triggered
by objects, attempts to represent a land of make-believe, a realm of total conviction in a child’s
imagination.