Bridget María Chesterton, professor of history and social studies education, was interviewed for a three-part BBC series on refugees, 100 Years of Exile, and featured in the third episode, "How Do Refugee Crises End?" which aired Tuesday, October 19, at 16:00 London time on BBC Radio 4. Dr. Chesterton spoke specifically about White Russians in Paraguay during the Chaco War. Her voice opens the broadcast (0:00), and she speaks again at length, with attribution, beginning at 2:20.

Frances Gage, associate professor of art history, Art and Design Department, published the chapter “‘It Is Not So Easy to Recognize the Period and Age of Paintings’: Visual and Textual Evidence in Giulio Mancini’s ‘Considerazioni sulla pittura’ and in Early Modern Connoisseurship” in the volume Zeigen - Überzeugen - Beweisen: Methoden der Wissensproduktion in Kunstliteratur, Kennerschaft und Sammlungspraxis der Frühen Neuzeit (E. Oy-Marra and I. Schmiedel, eds.; Heidelberg: arthistoricum, 2020; pp. 63–87).

Carlos Jones, associate dean of academic standards and student success in the School of Arts and Sciences and former faculty member in the Theater Department, is co-directing a newly conceived version of the Lerner and Loewe classic Camelot at MusicalFare Theatre on the Daemen College campus in Amherst, New York.

The production, which opened September 15 and runs through October 17, also features the talents of Buffalo State College theater major Alejandro Gabriél Gómez and alumnae Sam Crystal, ’15, and Gabriella McKinley, ’20. Tickets can be purchased online. Proof of COVID-19 vaccination is required to attend.

The originally production of Camelot opened on Broadway in 1960, starring Julie Andrews, Richard Burton, and Roddy McDowall, and is based on T. H. White’s novel The Once and Future King.

See the playbill.

Hope Dunbar, special collections archivist in Butler Library, has been awarded a $30,000 grant through the Western New York Library Resources Council to assist in digitizing the Buffalo Courier-Express Newspaper Collection. This grant funding will allow for the conversion of 235 microfilm reels spanning from September 11, 1968, to October 16, 1977, and comprising nearly 200,000 images. This marks another milestone in the Archives and Special Collections Department's ambitious push to provide free and open access to the complete run of this valuable and unique historical material for researchers worldwide. The editions from 1977 to 1982 have already been digitized by the department through grant funding and are freely available through NY Historic Newspapers. 

Kerry Renzoni, associate professor of music, will co-present the paper "International Perspectives of Early Childhood Music Instruction during the COVID-19 Pandemic" with colleagues from Brazil and South Korea at the 2021 IC CIPEM (Centre for Research in Psychology of Music and Music Education) virtual conference in Porto, Portugal, September 16–18.

Nancy Weekly, Burchfield scholar, head of collections, and Charles Cary Rumsey curator at the Burchfield Penney Art Center, recently marked her 40th anniversary with the center. Weekly began her instrumental career as a registrar/archivist at the museum, then known simply as the Burchfield Center, on September 1, 1981, under the executive leadership of Edna M. Lindemann.

Recognized as the world’s leading authority on Charles E. Burchfield, Ms. Weekly has served as the Burchfield Penney instructor of museum studies for Buffalo State College's History and Social Studies Education Department for the past decade.

She frequently receives inquiries from prestigious museums and collectors and is contacted by major international auction houses and galleries for her expertise, including Bonhams, Christie’s, Sotheby’s and Swann Auction Galleries.

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Vida Vanchan, professor of geography and planning, authored the chapter "Global Pandemic Disruptions, Reconfiguration, and Glocalization of Production Networks" in the recently published book Living with Pandemics: Places, People, and Policy (J. R. Bryson, L. Andres, A. Ersoy, and L. Reardon, eds; Edward Elgar Publishing, 2021). This book provides an integrated and multilevel analysis of the impacts of COVID-19 on people, places, economies, and policies across the globe, exploring how the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic combined failure with success. It focuses on exploring rapid adaptation and improvisation by individuals, organizations, and governments as they attempted to minimize and mitigate the socioeconomic and health impacts of the pandemic.

Leasa Rochester-Mills, director of academic transition programs in Academic Success, received the Executive Director’s Advisor Award from Alpha Lambda Delta (ALD), the national honor society for first-year academic success. The Advisor Award recognizes recipients for their exceptional work during the 2020–2021 academic year, as well as their dedication to students and support of ALD’s mission.

An ALD adviser since 2017, Ms. Rochester-Mills assisted the executive board in the 2018 planning of the National Leadership Conference in Buffalo, New York, and is an active member of ALD’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) Task Force, discussing best practices, identifying resources, and helping create the national DEIB survey. In March, she was also selected to serve on behalf of ALD on the Association of College Honor Societies’ Annual Conference panel.

An article by assistant professor of theater Jonathan Seinen, "'Room for Failure Was Abundant': A Personal Account of SummerWorks," exploring his artistic journey at Toronto's SummerWorks Performance Festival from 2006 to 2017, appears in the Summer 2021 edition of Canadian Theatre Review (vol. 187). In early August, he presented a paper on his queer adaptation of the classic Broadway musical Cabaret, titled "'What Would You Do?': A Utopian Vision for Cabaret," which he presented as his Columbia University M.F.A. thesis production, at this year’s ATHE (Association for Theatre in Higher Eduction) conference.

Vida Vanchan, professor of geography and planning, co-edited the book Ordinary Cities, Extraordinary Geographies (August 2021, Edward Elgar Publishing). This timely and important book is useful for those focusing on cities and economic development as well as policy makers and planners seeking insights on current debates reframing urban theory to embrace more ordinary towns and cities. The book explores smaller towns and cities—places in which the majority of people live—highlighting that these more ordinary places have extraordinary geographies. It focuses on the development of an alternative approach to urban studies and theory that foregrounds smaller cities and towns rather than much larger cities and conurbations.