Kate Fishman – The Oberlin Review

College Mentors Work with Elementary, Middle School Students

December 7, 2018

Rarely have I smiled so hard as I did at the Cat in the Cream this past week at not one but two fantastic performances by students from local Oberlin schools. Kids from Prospect Elementary School and Langston Middle School wowed packed houses on Monday and Wednesday — Monday night’s offering was a poetry reading by the middle school students, and Wednesday’s was a dance performance by students from both schools as a culmination of the afterschool program Girls and Boys in Motion. Both of ...

“A Man In the House” Celebrates Family Ties

November 30, 2018

This weekend will mark the opening of A Man In the House, an Oberlin Student Theater Association production. Written by Elinore Siminovitch, the play takes place in 1937 Montreal and chronicles the lives of Lily, a progressive trade unionist, her daughter Jenny, who rejects her mother’s aspirations for her to attend medical school, and Lily’s mother, who cares deeply about her family but resists progress. A boarder comes to live with them as the first man in their house and the strikes up a romance...

Blas Falconer, Poet

November 16, 2018

Blas Falconer is a queer Latinx poet and editor who came to Oberlin to read from his new book, Forgive the Body This Failure, on Thursday, Nov. 15. Falconer teaches in the MFA program at San Diego State University. His other published works are The Foundling Wheel, A Question of Gravity and Light, and The Perfect Hour. Falconer received a 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award from Poets & Writers, and the Barthelme Fellowship, among others. He i...

Editorial: Museum Symposium Presents Opportunity to Evaluate Western Canon at Oberlin, Broader Academia

November 2, 2018

A popular misconception in the art world is the belief that classical Greek and Roman sculptures in museums across the world look the way they’re supposed to. Unpainted, bare, and unmistakably white, these sculptures propagate the false notion that ancient artists meant to showcase the ideal human form in swaths of pale marble. However, classical sculptures that are white today were originally meant to be seen in color — scientific evidence suggests they were once painted in bright, blazing...

Pottery Co-Op Provides Welcoming Space to New Members

October 12, 2018

Watching potters work with clay is an almost hypnotic experience. They make the form look so easy, yet, they are creating a physical artifact that will exist in the world to be touched and used. Although clay seems to move effortlessly beneath expert fingers, for a novice, a piece can collapse into nothing but wet lumps. Learning to work with ceramics can be intimidating. The skill is both artful and quite complicated, with different pottery styles and techniques requiring many unfamiliar tools...

One Last Time: Spice Lo Performs at Oberlin

October 12, 2018

Last Saturday marked the final “Lo at the ’Sco” concert, and although College sophomore Derek Mahone — or as he is perhaps better known, Spice Lo — has been at Oberlin for just over a year, it feels like the end of an era. Described on his website as an independent “recording artist, engineer and producer,” Mahone has tremendous ambition. He’s released two albums as Spice Lo — I Can’t Relate: A Love Story and The Cabernet Facade — as well as an EP, Growth. Most recently, Mahone’s...

Chanda Feldman, Assistant Professor of Creative Writing

October 12, 2018

Assistant Professor of Creative Writing Chanda Feldman read her original poetry during the Allen Memorial Art Museum’s Tuesday Tea series this week. Some of her poems were directly inspired by a multimedia exhibit currently on display in the Ripin Gallery, Radically Ordinary: Scenes from Black Life in America since 1968. Feldman has been teaching at Oberlin since the fall of 2017. This year, she was one of two professors in the department to be offered a coveted tenure-track position (alongside As...

“What I Didn’t Say” Showcases Marginalized Voices in STEAM

Kate Fishman, Arts & Culture Editor

October 12, 2018

Filed under ARTS, Music

It’s no secret that cisgender men outnumber women and nonbinary people in STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art and design, and mathematics) fields. The disproportionate dominance of cis male thoughts and ideas within those spaces is often less emphasized. “While lack of gender diversity is a significant problem in many STEAM fields, equally troubling is the extent to which the voices of nonbinary individuals and women are underrepresented in proportion to their relative representation in these fields,” wrote TIMARA Technical Director and Lecturer Abby Aresty in an email to the Review. Over the summer, Aresty envisioned the upcoming sound art installation “What I Didn’t Say,” which will run Saturday,...

Oberlin Dance Department Celebrates its Ranking Among Nation’s Top 25 Programs

October 5, 2018

In my junior year of high school, my lifelong dance teacher told me that she hoped there was a strong dance program wherever I chose to go to college, because she was sure I would miss it. I nodded politely, sure she was wrong. During my college search, I barely considered dance — and yet, I spent much of my first semester at Oberlin rapturously watching dance, writing about dance, and fangirling over the pieces being created here and the amazing dancers doing the creating. When I began to...

Palm, Julia Julian to Hit ’Sco Stage with Experimental Rock

Kate Fishman, Arts & Culture Editor

September 21, 2018

Filed under ARTS, Music

The Philadelphia-based rock band Palm will be returning to Oberlin this weekend to perform at the ’Sco, with student band Julia Julian opening. The show, hosted by the Student Union Programming Committee, promises fresh and innovative music coming to the stage at 10 p.m. tomorrow night. Bridget Conway, College sophomore and booker for the ’Sco, is excited about the eclectic nature of Palm. Regardless of whether students previously knew of the band, she thinks they will have an enjoyable night. “They reached out to us, actually, wanting to play a show in Oberlin,” she explained. “They have a really unique sound that I think a lot of Oberlin students would be into, especially [Conservatory] kids, or just...

Emily Barton and Thomas Israel Hopkins, Oberlin’s Newest Creative Writing Faculty

September 21, 2018

Professors Emily Barton and Tom Hopkins are the two newest faculty members of Oberlin’s Creative Writing department. Barton is currently an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing — one of the two recently hired tenure-track faculty, the other of whom is Chanda Feldman, who was hired as a visiting assistant professor last year. Hopkins is a Visiting Assistant Professor of Creative Writing. The professors are married with two children. Both Barton and Hopkins graduated from Harvard College. Ba...

Oslam Open Mic Highlights Talent of New Poets

Kate Fishman, Arts & Culture Editor

September 14, 2018

Filed under ARTS, Literature & Poetry

Each time a poet took to the stage and announced their name and pronouns followed by “I’m a first-year,” the audience erupted into a chorus of snapping and cheering. This was “Back 2 School Open Mic,” hosted by OSlam, Oberlin’s poetry collective. The event, which occurred last Friday at the Cat in the Cream, was the first opportunity this academic year for Oberlin students to hop on stage alongside OSlam’s three current members and share some of their work. “I’ve worked a lot of open mics because I work at the Cat in the Cream, and it can be really hard,” College junior Amy Sahud said. “The energy can definitely dip, [but] I feel like we sustained it. I thought [the audience] was really supportive,...