Subjects

Announcing “BodyStories,” “Body and Earth,” and “The Place of Dance”

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“Olsen finds her fresh edge with a holistic vision with which to dance, make dances and move through life.”
—Desirée Dunbar, Dance International Magazine

Wesleyan University Press is excited about keeping her trilogy of practical work books in print, for dancers, choreographers, and other movement artists. Or for anybody who wishes to explore movement in a creative way.

For an introduction to Andrea Olsen’s work, visit her Body and Earth website, where you will find seven movement explorations  developed with her colleague Caryn McHose.

Originally published by the University Press of New England in 1998, BodyStories: A Guide to Experiential Anatomy is a book that engages our interest in human anatomy. Thirty-one days of learning sessions heighten awareness about each bone and body system and provide self-guided studies. The book draws on Ms. Olsen’s thirty years as a dancer and teacher of anatomy to show how our attitudes and approaches to our body affect us day to day. Amusing and insightful personal stories enliven the text and provide ways of working with the body for efficiency and for healing. BodyStories is used as a primary text in college dance departments, massage schools, and yoga training programs internationally. Now, you can use the book to guide you in your home studies.

Olsen’s second book, Body and Earth: An Experiential Guide was also published by the University Press of New England, in 2002. The book is not only a lesson plan, it is also an investigation. Arranged as a 31-day program, the book offer a wealth of scientific information and exercises for exploring the body and connecting with place. Illustrations and other art illuminate each chapter’s themes, and Olsen’s meditations and reflections connect the topics to her personal history and experience. Olsen insists that neither body nor landscape are separate from our fundamental selves, but in a culture which views the body as a mechanism to be trained and the landscape as a resource to be exploited, we need to learn again to see their fundamental wholeness and interconnection. Through hard data, reflection, exercises, and inspiration, Body and Earth offers a guide to responsible stewardship of both our bodies and the planet.

The Place of Dance: A Somatic Guide to Dancing and Dance Making, first published by Wesleyan University Press in 2014, reminds us that dancing is in our nature, available to all as well as refined for the stage. This workbook integrates experiential anatomy with the process of moving and dancing, with a particular focus on the creative journey involved in choreographing, improvising, and performing for others. Each of the chapters, or “days,” introduces a particular theme and features a dance photograph, information on the topic, movement and writing investigations, personal anecdotes, and studio notes from professional artists and educators for further insight. It is well suited for dancers, or anyone interested in engaging embodied intelligence and living more consciously.

These three books are excellent teaching tools and will help each reader to understand his/her dancing body through somatic work, create a dance, and to create a full journal clarifying aesthetic views on his or her practice. Wesleyan University Press is now keeping all three of Olsen’s volumes in print.

ANDREA OLSEN is professor of dance and faculty member in the Environmental Studies Program at Middlebury College. She is a certified Holden QiGong and Embodyoga instructor, teaching classes and workshops worldwide. She also performs frequently, with current accolades in her piece “Awakening Grace: Six Somatic Tools.” In addition to writing, teaching, and performing, she is also working on a continuing film project with Scotty Hardwig and Caryn McHose entitled Body and Earth: Seven Web-Based Somatic Excursions. 

Caryn McHose is Olsen’s frequent writing collaborator. She has a private practice in somatic movement therapy in Holderness, New Hampshire, and has taught creative movement internationally for more than forty years. She is coauthor, with Kevin Frank, of How Life Moves: Explorations in Meaning and Body Awareness.

 

Aldon Nielsen reads Lorenzo Thomas for Distāntia Reading Series

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In a time of social distancing, virtual connection has become more important than ever. Off Topic Poetics, a non-profit Youtube channel, has taken full advantage of the moment by starting the Distāntia Reading Series. The online video project is described as “an experimentation with intimate social distancing through remote access to poetry.” The channel accepts recordings from poets reading their work in quarantine and posts them to a playlist titled “Distāntia.” The original work, coupled with a video of the poet reading, creates an intimate viewing experience that can help people who feel isolated from human interaction during COVID-19 distancing.

           

“Sprucing Spring up on Larkin Street,” a poem from The Collected Poems of Lorenzo Thomas, was recited by editor Aldon Lynn Nielsen and submitted to the project earlier this week. Lorenzo Thomas (1944−2005) was the youngest member of the Society of Umbra, predecessor of the Black Arts Movement. The Collected Poems of Lorenzo Thomas is the first volume to encompass his entire writing life. His poetry synthesizes New York School and Black Arts aesthetics, heavily influenced by blues and jazz. In a career that spanned decades, Thomas constantly experimented with form and subject, while still writing poetry deeply rooted in the traditions of African American aesthetics. Whether drawing from his experiences during the war in Vietnam, exploring his life in the urban north and the southwest, or recalling his beloved ancestors, Thomas was a lyric innovator. His experimentation is perfect for our current moment of social improvisation in the face of the unknown, reminding us that we can always find new ways to navigate the world around us.

Subscribe to Off Topic Poetics on Youtube to stay updated on the Distāntia Reading Series, and check out The Collected Poems of Lorenzo Thomas to read more like “Sprucing Spring up on Larkin Street” to keep you company during social distancing.

 

 

 

 

More award-winning music titles from Wesleyan!

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We are pleased to announce that Dynamic Korea and Rhythmic Form, by Katherine In-Young Lee, is the recipient of The Béla Bartók Award for Outstanding Ethnomusicology from ASCAP.

From the judging committee citation:

“Dynamic Korea and Rhythmic Form by Katherine In-Young Lee, published by Wesleyan University Press, received The Béla Bartók Award for Outstanding Ethnomusicology. The book explores how a percussion genre from South Korea (samul nori) became a global music genre. In it, Lee contends that rhythm-based forms serve as a critical site for cross-cultural musical encounters.”

About the book:

The South Korean percussion genre, samul nori, is a world phenomenon whose powerful rhythmic form is its key to its international popularity and mobility. Similar to other music genres that have become truly global—hip-hop, Indonesian gamelan, Japanese taiko—samul nori’s rhythmic forms are experienced on a somatic level, making the movement between cultures easier. Based on both ethnographic research and close formal analysis, author Katherine In-Young Lee focuses on the kinetic experience of samul nori, drawing on the concept of dynamism to explain how qualities of movement and energy shifts in its rhythmic form appeals to audiences and practitioners worldwide. Lee explores the historical, philosophical, and pedagogical dimensions of the percussive form while breaking with traditional approaches to the study of world music that privilege political, economic, institutional, or ideological analytical frameworks. Lee argues that because samul nori is experienced on a somatic level, the form easily moves beyond national boundaries and provides sites for cross-cultural interaction. Her work provides a study of how a national cultural form goes transnational, based on ethnographic interviews with samul nori ensembles in South Korea, the United States, Switzerland, Mexico, and Japan

Katherine In-Young Lee is assistant professor of ethnomusicology at UCLA and her work has appeared in Journal of Korean Studies, Ethnomusicology, and Journal of Korean Traditional Performing Arts.

Also of interest:

Citizen Azmari: Making Ethiopian Music in Tel Aviv, by Ilana Webster-Kogen, published by the Wesleyan University Press, received the Society for Ethnomusicology’s 2019 Publication Prize given by the Special Interest Group of Jewish Music. The books sheds light on Ethiopian-Israeli music, and in it, Webster-Kogen challenges notions of Jewishness, of Israeli-ness, and of global blackness, showing how Ethiopian-Israelis move within all of these groups and create complex webs of belonging through musical performance.

“Language Turned Into Pure Sound”

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Alvin Lucier – Parshall, Colorado, 1997. Photo: Amanda Lucier.

“A lot of my work is revealing sounds that are already there…”

Composer, educator, and writer Alvin Lucier was interviewed by Maggie Malloy for Second Inversion at the 2019 Big Ears Festival, where his music was performed by Joan La Barbara, the Ever Present Orchestra, and the composer himself.

In the interview, which features a recording of Lucier’s most iconic work I Am Sitting in a Room, Lucier discusses not only the music itself but how it is perceived and felt and what separates it from the work of his contemporaries. His work is experimental, dealing with the science of sound, playing with the wavelengths of sound itself and discovering how the physical dimensions it occupies changes its resonances.

Alvin Lucier is John Spencer Camp Professor of Music, Emeritus, at Wesleyan University, where he taught from 1968 to 2011. Recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music in the United States, Lucier was the guest composer at the Tectonics Festival in Glasgow and the Ultima Festival in Oslo, gave a portrait concert at the Louvre, Paris, was honored by a three-day festival of his works at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.

Books by Alvin Lucier

Music 109: Notes on Experimental Music

Eight Lectures on Experimental Music

To listen to recordings of his music, visit Alvin Lucier’s webpage.

 

Meet Priscilla Page, dramaturg who worked with Joy Harjo!

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Joy Harjo and Priscilla Page in conversation at Yale University, March 2019.

Priscilla Page was co-editor and contributor to Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light: A Play by Joy Harjo and A Circle of Responses. The play was inspired by Harjo’s desire to see Native Americans accurately depicted on the stage, in the face of inaccurate contemporary depictions found in the likes of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and Cry, Trojans!, in addition other recent plays. As Mary Kathryn Nagle points out in her introductory essay: “In contrast to the majority of contemporary Native representation onstage, the Native protagonist of Wings does not grunt incoherent sounds, nor does she portray the loss of her Muscogee ancestral homelands as a joke in a modern day rock musical.”

Priscilla Page is a writer, dramaturg, senior lecturer in the Department of Theater and coordinator for the Multicultural Theater Certificate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and a member of the Latino Theater Commons and Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA). She served as the program curator at New WORLD Theater and managed the Asian American Women Playwrights Archive for five years.

Page’s dramaturgy works include My Bronx, written and performed by Terry Jenoure, sash & trim, written and performed by Djola Branner and directed by award winning actress Laurie Carlos, Changing the Air, written and directed by Ingrid Askew, and Lydia on the Top Floor, also written and performed by Terry Jenoure and directed by Linda McInerney. Page also contributed to widely published playwright Migdalia Cruz’s essay “My World Made Real,” a part of Cruz’s anthology, El Grito Del Bronx. She earned her BA at California State University Hayward, and her MFA in dramaturgy at University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Question & Answer with Priscilla Page

Q Tell us about what led you to become a dramaturg?

A I have always loved theater and performance. I took dance classes with my cousins when I was really young and then I was in the choir and in plays in high school. Like many young people, I wanted to move to New York and become an actor. I had big dreams for a while. In college, I chose to have a child and then redirected my path in life. I finished college with an emphasis on costume design and an interest in dramaturgy. Right after college, I was able to work as an intern as dramaturg at UC Santa Barbara where my love for theater research continued to grow. That experience led me to study dramaturgy at UMASS Amherst where I earned my MFA in 2002. There are many facets to dramaturgy and dramaturgs perform a number of different functions that include research, translation, education, audience engagement, and new play development. As a dramaturg, I am most interested in working with writers (playwrights and poets) on new plays/performance texts. Laurie Carlos, my mentor and art-mother, helped forge what is known as the jazz aesthetics in theater and I see her influence on my work clearly. I appreciate theater that blends forms and that pushes creative and political boundaries. Joy’s play does these things and shows the readers a path toward self-actualization and healing.

Q  What do you envision, for the future of Indigenous Theater and Indigenous Performance?

A I envision respect, understanding, and resources. We chose to place Mary Kathryn Nagle’s essay first in the book because she lays out such a clear statement about the absence AND the distortions of Native American people on the American stage that is both historical and ongoing. Native American artists have rich and complex stories to tell. We need audiences to listen and we need resources to cultivate new voices and spaces for Native American writers and performers.

Q How did you come to work on Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light, a book about Indigenous Theater?

A I met Joy in 2003 when she performed as part of the Global Women’s History Project at Westfield State College. My dear friend and incredible poet Magdalena Gomez also participated in that event and told me about it. I have loved Joy’s poetry since I first read it as a young woman in college in California in the 1990s. At the time that Joy and I met, I was having a hard time emotionally because my Aunt Linda had passed away and recently. It was sudden and it deeply affected my mother. I wasn’t able to travel home and felt very sad and lonely. I had never seen pictures of Joy but I knew many of her poems: “She Had Some Horses”, “Remember”, “Woman Hanging From the 13th Floor Window”. I expected to be moved by hearing her but what was totally unexpected was how I felt when I saw her. She looks just like my Aunt Linda. I ended up sitting in the back of the room and weeping through the entire reading. When it was over, I couldn’t bring myself to leave the space. In fact, I moved closer to the stage without really wanting to talk to Joy. I only wanted to be close to her as I grieved. I am sure she sensed that something was going on with me because I think I ended up being the only person in the auditorium. I vividly recall Joy sitting next to me and starting a conversation with me. I told her that she looked like my aunt and she simply said, “Tell me about her.” I shared with her that I knew a little about my family’s heritage as Native Americans but that my mom and her siblings were virtually silent about that part of themselves. We come from a very small tribe that endured incredible violence in Northern California, the Wiyot Tribe. Joy knew of this tribe and their history. She had even done work with them and visited their land. I had a copy of her poem “Remember” with me and I asked her to sign it. She wrote, “I hope this poem helps you find your people.”

I share part of this story in the book and with you now because it did help me continue to ask questions and do research; it’s a journey that I am still taking. I also learned from Joy and through my research that my family’s silence was really a form of self-preservation. White settlers intended to completely wipe them out and enacted a series massacres with the most horrific one taking place on Indian Island in Humboldt Bay on February 26, 1860. After that the surviving members went underground, joining other tribes nearby or inter-marrying. My grandmother Lila Keysner was born in 1910 and the word “half-breed” is listed on her birth certificate. Her grandparents would have lived during the time of the massacres. The only detail that I really know is that she lived on a reservation until she married my grandfather Raymond Chavarin, a Mexican man. They lived in Oakland, CA, and had nine children together.

After meeting Joy in 2003, I attended the reading of Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light at the Public Theater in 2009. I remember really loving the idea of telling the story of Redbird with poetry and music. It’s the perfect form for Joy because she has led bands over the years and because she often plays her saxophone at her poetry readings. In 2011, I was able to work with my colleague Professor Laura Furlan at UMASS Amherst and we hosted Joy and Larry Mitchell for a short residency that included a performance, a workshop version of “Wings” and the radio interview that I conducted with Joy and Ron Welburn, a leading figure in Native Studies and an expert on jazz. I included parts of that interview in my essay in the book as well. It was after that residency that Joy asked me to work with her on the book project. It actually took us a while and there were some starts and stops with shape of the book and the contributors. I am very happy that we worked with Mary Kathryn Nagle who wrote a strong and compelling essay and that I was able to interview both Randy Reinholz, a Native theater director and producer who I know and admire as well as Rolland Meinholtz who was very generous with his time and his recollections. And the book is stunning! I love the design of it and the inclusion of the production photos.

Photos from a production of Wings of Night Sky, Wings of Morning Light.
(Click on the photos to expand.)

Announcing “Letters from Amherst”

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Entertaining and informative letters written from 1984 to 1991

In these personal and pointed letters written between 1984 and 1991, Hugo and Nebula Award-winning writer Samuel Delany comments on literature, art, politics, aging, academia, his family’s history in Harlem, and black and white social life in another century. He details a visit from science fiction writer and critic Judith Merrill and reflects on his colleague and former student Octavia E. Butler.

Samuel R. Delany is a science fiction author and a retired professor at Temple University. After winning four Nebula Awards and two Hugo Awards, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2002. Visit samueldelany.com for more author news.

Nalo Hopkinson was born in Jamaica. She is the author of six novels and numerous short stories. She has received the Campbell and Locus Awards, the World Fantasy Award, and the Octavia E. Butler Memorial Award for her contributions to science fiction and fantasy. Currently she teaches creative writing at the University of California at Riverside.

“Letters from Amherst gives readers insight into the personal and professional life and aesthetic assessments of the author, Samuel R. Delany, one of the most important literary figures of our time.”—Nisi Shawl, author of the Nebula Award Finalist novel Everfair, and the James Tiptree Jr. Award-winning story collection Filter House

“Letters from Amherst is significant and important…Delany provides unseen glimpses into his important familial lineages, personal friendship and partnership, his assessment of universities and their politics, and a general joy in anything that has to do with intellectual culture.” —L.H. Stallings, author of Funk the Erotic: Transaesthetics and Black Sexual Cultures

June 4, 2019
160 pp., 9 x 6″
Paperback, $17.95 9780819578518
Cloth, $45.00 9780819578204

Announcing “Konnakkol Manual”

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Exercises and theory for advanced students of Solkaṭṭu

“The South Indian rhythmic core, the demystifying strategies, transforming capability of the content and the manner of presentation, the authenticity of the rhythmic repertoire, the learning tips from the wealth of the author’s musical experience in South Indian drumming over half a century, gained from the acclaimed Karnatak music maestros—all this and much more, are most valuable for students, performers, teachers of improvisation in the world of music.”
— Karaikudi Subramanian, Founder and director of Brhaddhvani Research & Training Center for Musics of the World

 

Konnakkol Manual assists in the advanced study of Karnatak (South Indian) music. It picks up where Solkaṭṭu Manual left off, including advanced exercises and a discussion of the sources of Karnatak tāḷas (meters). In one chapter, the evolution of rhythmic compositions is illustrated through the work of three generations of musicians. The book contains full tani āvartanams (spoken percussion solos) in three tāḷas, together with instructions for practice and Solkaṭṭunotation. A hundred and fifty accompanying instructional videos are available at wesleyan.edu/wespress/konnakkol.

David P. Nelson has been performing and teaching South Indian drumming since 1975 and has a PhD. in ethnomusicology from Wesleyan University, where he is currently adjunct assistant professor.

“Konnakkol Manual is a very valuable addition to rhythm studies for any musician. The material is presented in a clear and systematic way, very appropriate for teachers and students.” —Glen Valez, New School

“The South Indian rhythmic core, the demystifying strategies, transforming capability of the content and the manner of presentation, the authenticity of the rhythmic repertoire, the learning tips from the wealth of the author’s musical experience in South Indian drumming over half a century, gained from the acclaimed Karnatak music maestros—all this and much more, are most valuable for students, performers, teachers of improvisation in the world of music.” —Karaikudi Subramanian, Founder and director of Brhaddhvani Research & Training Center for Musics of the World

“High caliber and innovative mrdangist David Nelson shares insights acquired over more than four decades in this well-paced guide to advanced rhythmic composition in South Indian music. Written in an inviting style and amply illustrated with video demonstrations, this manual will be useful for creative musicians of all backgrounds.” —Richard K. Wolf, author of The Voice in the Drum

“The lessons present the rhythmic concepts in a completely comprehensible and thorough way. This book may be the best way to dive into these concepts, short of getting on a flight to Chennai.” —Jamey Haddad, American percussionist

“Very courageous and musically friendly.” —Trilok Gurtu, percussionist and composer

June 4, 2019
200 pp. 28 illus., 8 1/2 x 11”
Paper, $34.95 978-0-8195-7878-5

Exploring Wild Nights with Emily with Open Me Carefully

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In the recently premiered film, Wild Nights with Emily, directed by Madeleine Olnek, starring Molly Shannon (Emily Dickinson) and Susan Ziegler (Susan Huntington Dickinson), the famous nineteenth-century American poet is brought to life in a new sapphic light.

Based on Ellen Louise Hart and Martha Nell Smith’s collection, Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson’s Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson, Olnek’s new film brings to the forefront Emily’s previously censured relationship with her sister-in-law, Susan. Departing from Terence Davies’ serious and abstinent film, A Quiet Passion (2016), Olnek partners with Smith to unveil the powerful intimacy of Dickinson’s letters, generating a new portrayal of Emily as someone who “lived on her own terms.”

Since its original publication in 1998 with Paris Press, Open Me Carefully, has struck a chord in the poetry world, compiling into a single volume for the first time, selections from Emily Dickinson’s thirty-six year correspondence to Susan Huntington Dickinson. Martha Nell Smith—who Olnek collaborated with to direct the film—is Distinguished Scholar-Teacher, Professor of English, and Founding Director of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities at the University of Maryland. Ellen Louise Hart is the author of articles featured in The Emily Dickinson International Society Bulletin, Emily Dickinson Journal, An Emily Dickinson Encyclopedia, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, The Women’s Review of Books, and The Heath Anthology of American Literature.

To read more, visit your local bookstore or order a copy online with HFS Books.

excerpt from the book:

                                                             Sunday afternoon

So sweet and still, and Thee, Oh Susie, what I need more, to
make my heaven whole?

Sweet Hour, blessed Hour, to carry me with you, and to bring
you back to me, long enough to snatch one kiss, and whisper
Good bye, again.

The Age of Phillis, forthcoming from Honorée Fanonne Jeffers

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Wesleyan University Press is pleased to announce we have secured the world rights to The Age of Phillis, a new volume of poetry by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, who is represented by Sarah Burnes at The Gernert Company.

The Age of Phillis is the result of over a decade of research and contemplation by Jeffers. She draws on historical sources to take readers into the world of Phillis Wheatley, the first black American woman to publish a book. Wheatley published a volume of poetry entitled Poems of Various Subjects, Religion, and Morals on September 1, 1773. Jeffers imagines Wheatley’s thoughts as she navigates life as an intellectual, as an enslaved person, as an observant poet, and as a woman of African descent—eventually a freed woman, and wife, whose life would be cut short by poverty and illness.

Wesleyan plans for for a Spring 2020 publication date.

About the Author

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers is the author of four previous books of poetry including The Glory Gets, published by Wesleyan University Press in May 2015. Her other books are: The Gospel of Barbecue (Kent State, 2000)—selected by Lucille Clifton for the Wick Poetry Prize and a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize, Outlandish Blues (Wesleyan, 2003), and Red Clay Suite (Southern Illinois, 2007).

Her poetry has appeared in American Poetry Review, African American Review, Callaloo, The Kenyon Review, Iowa Review, Massachusetts Review, Obsidian III, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and has been anthologized in Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of Contemporary African American Poetry (2011) and Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry (Georgia, 2009). Her critical writing has appeared in The Kenyon Review and Virginia Quarterly Review. Jeffers has received numerous awards and honors, including a Witter Bynner Fellowship through the Library of Congress, a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Julia Peterkin Award for Poetry, the Harper Lee Award for Literary Distinction, a lifetime achievement honor, and an award from the Rona Jaffe Foundation for Women Writers. For her research on Phillis Wheatley, Jeffers was elected into the American Antiquarian Society, a learned organization for the study of early American history and culture, to which fourteen US presidents have elected. She is a professor of English at the University of Oklahoma.

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Three Wesleyan University Press Authors Receive 2019 Guggenheim Fellowships

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Congratulations to three Wesleyan University Press authors who have been awarded the 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship. This year, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation chose 168 recipients from 30,000 applicants from the United States and Canada. Guggenheim Fellowships are intended for individuals who have already demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts.

Winners from the Press include:

Ann Cooper Albright

Ann Cooper Albright is Professor and Chair of the Department of Dance at Oberlin College. She is the author of Moving History/Dancing Cultures: A Dance History Reader (Wesleyan University Press, 2001), Traces of Light: Absence and Presence in the Work of Loïe Fuller (Wesleyan University Press, 2007), and Engaging Bodies: The Politics and Poetics of Corporeality (Wesleyan University Press, 2014). She is a recipient of the 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship for Dance Studies.

Camille Dungy

Camille Dungy is a professor in the English Department at Colorado State University. She is the author of Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), winner of the Colorado Book Award in 2018. She is a recipient of the 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship for Poetry.

Shane McCrae

Shane McCrae is an Assistant Professor of Writing at Columbia University. He is the author of In the Language of My Captor (Wesleyan University Press, 2017), a finalist for the National Book Award in 2018. He is a recipient of the 2019 Guggenheim Fellowship for Poetry.