Artist Kat Burdine uses objects and prints to negotiate ideas about physicality and the body. A graduate of the Cranbrook Academy of Art and currently based in Cleveland, she is the founder of Wondershop Studio and teaches at both the Cleveland Institute of Art and Cuyahoga Community College. She has collaborated with many artists on a variety of projects, including Talking Dolls in Detroit. Her recent lecture at Oberlin, “A Matter of Hapticstance — One Queer’s Feeling on Feeling(s),” di...

Andrea Gyorody was recently hired as the new Ellen Johnson ’33 assistant curator of modern and contemporary art at the Allen Memorial Art Museum. She graduated from Amherst College in 2007 and went on to receive a master’s degree in Art History from Williams College. Currently a Ph.D. candidate in art history at University of California, Los Angeles and a recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and a German Academic Exchange Service Fellowship, Gyorody spent two years in Germany studying post-wa...

Associate Professor of Theater and Africana Studies Justin Emeka, OC ’95, discovered acting at a young age, but racially restrictive casting drove him more toward directing. He graduated with a master’s degree in directing from the University of Washington School of Drama in 2005 and has been extensively involved in staging works of classical theater productions with Black casts for many years. Emeka hosted an event called “Re-imagining Classical American Theater” at the Playhouse Square...

Percussionist Jennifer Torrence, OC ’09, is a solo and collaborative performer based in Oslo, Norway, where she is a research fellow at the Norwegian Academy of Music. Torrence specializes in contemporary percussion writing and performance, and her recent projects include writing evening-length solo productions and other percussion pieces with artists such as François Sarhan, Peter Swendsen, Trond Reinholdtsen, Woljtek Blecharz, Johan Jutterström, Carolyn Chen and Anna Mikhailova. She plays with the AJO ensemble and NorthArc Percussion in Norway and is the former principal percussionist of the Artic Philharmonic. She has worked with music legends such as Pierre Boulez and Jonathan Harvey and has premiered Unsuk ...