Lamont Faculty Grant Recipients

Eleven Lamont faculty members received grants from the College of Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences in the 2023-2024 funding cycle.

• The Lorraine Mathies Liberal Arts Fund supports course and curriculum-related expenses in the liberal arts – honoraria for visiting speakers, museum tickets, etc. Remy Le Boeuf, Mitch Ohriner, and Zoe Weiss all received support from this fund to support their teaching or curricular work.
   
• The Book Publishing Support Fund helps cover costs associated with book publications, including reproduction fees, indexing costs, and publishing subventions. Aleysia Whitmore and Sarah Morelli received support from this fund to support book projects in the final stage of publication.
   
• The Creative Arts Materials Fund (CAMF) helps cover the costs of materials associated with creative work for those in CAHSS arts programs. Martin Kuuskmann, Jeremy Reynolds, Matthew Zalkind, and Remy Le Boeuf all received support from this fund to further their creative work.
   
• The Dean’s Award for Interdisciplinary Studies (DAIS) fund supports interdisciplinary work in scholarship, creative work, and/or teaching. Zoe Weiss received support to advance her interdisciplinary research and scholarship projects.
   
• The CAHSS Rosenberry Fund awards support on the theme of “making our work public”, covering costs associated with theatrical productions, musical performances, art exhibitions, film presentations, conference presentations, and similar activities. Sean Friar, Richard Harris, Kristin Taavola, and Matthew Zalkind received support from this fund to aid their efforts to share their work publicly.
   
• The Anna Maglione-Sie Travel Grants support faculty who travel to and work in Italy. Basil Vendryes, Lawrence Golan, and Sahar Nouri were recipients of these grants. 

Here's a sample of how Lamont faculty plan to spend their grants:

Zoe Weiss: "The big DAIS grant that Christy Cobb and I received was in support of developing and offering an interdisciplinary course on Hildegard of Bingen that we’ll be offering for the first time this year (Winter Quarter 2025) and plan to offer every other year. Hildegard of Bingen was a polymath even by the standards of her own era, the twelfth century. She was active as a as a musician, artist, mystic, theologian, natural healer, philosopher, and diplomat. This interdisciplinary team-taught course will read across many academic fields of study including religion, women/gender/sexuality studies, music, and art history as well as primary sources. Students will experience 12th century scholarly and every-day practices through in-class projects such as manuscript illumination or cookie baking, and participate in experiential learning through journaling, meditation, and singing."

Aleysia Whitmore: "This was for my book that came out in 2020, World Music and the Black Atlantic (Oxford University Press 2020), covering the indexing costs."

Kristin Taavola: "My Rosenberry grant was for example production for a chapter in The Oxford Handbook of Musical Variation, entitled, "The Development and Deconstruction of Variation Form in Nineteenth-Century Paris.”

Matthew Zalkind: "These grants are all being used to record a CD of works for cello and piano. The title of the CD is "In a Folk Style" centered around the Schumann works with that name, and other folk-inspired works for cello and piano. I recorded the CD in New York with pianist Julio Elizalde, and we expect to release it sometime next year!"

Jeremy Reynolds: "My grant will fund a new recording project of clarinet music composed entirely by Jenni Brandon. Jenni wrote an amazing clarinet concerto entitled Fin de la Tierra: Land's End, where the clarinet serves as a guide taking the listener on a journey throughout the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, to observe the beauty and diversity of the landscape, the water, the animals that live in and around it and their symbiotic relationship that require a delicate balance of conservation and observation." 

Sean Friar: "My Rosenberry Fund award was to support a performance tour of my music in Fall 2023.  The Siegfried-Friar Duo (myself as composer and pianist, and Jeff Siegfried on saxophone) performed at the University of Southern California, Cal State Long Beach, CU Boulder, Texas Tech, and Eastern New Mexico University."