Alex Freeman, assistant professor of music, will have his new composition work, "Aerial Voices (Variations on a Theme of Charles Fussell)," premiered in the new Helsinki Music Center in Helsinki, Finland on February 5. The music is inspired by the work of Charles Fussell - one of Freeman's former teachers, a friend and a mentor. Freeman's work is inspired the clarity, freshness, and emotional impact of Fussell’s music and includes twelve variations on a theme from the choral/symphonic work of Fussell's, Specimen Days. Finnish pianist Salla Karakorpi will premiere the new work along with works by Bartók and Brahms to a sold-out hall in the new music center in Finland. The event will be live-streamed at the Weitz Center Cinema at 11:00 a.m.

Associate Professor of Theater David Wiles is a cast member of "Johnny Baseball" at Park Square Theater in St Paul. The new musical looks at life and love through the lens of America’s favorite pastime: baseball. The play is the story of Johnny O'Brien, a hard-luck right-hander on the 1919 Red Sox and traces the American institution of baseball from the "Curse of the Bambino" through the Red Sox 2004 World Series win. The playwrights have taken a few liberties with their story, bending history a bit in order to effectively tell a love story set in the backdrop of a racially integrating Major League Baseball League.

Curator of Library Art and Exhibitions Margaret Pezalla-Granlund was awarded an artist's initiative grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. The grant will allow her to expand her printmaking skills, attend a residency program, and create a portfolio of broadsides inspired by mathematical illustrations.

Rob Oden has been named Chair of the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Board of Trustees. Oden has served as a member of the board since January 2011 and will succeed Wayne Granquist as chair. Dartmouth-Hitchcock is a national leader in patient-centered health care and creating a sustainable health system. As an academic medical center, Dartmouth-Hitchcock provides access to nearly 1,000 primary care doctors and specialists in almost every area of medicine, as well as world-class research at the Audrey and Theodor Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth.

Professor of French Chérif Keita had his film "Oberlin-Inanda: The Life and Times of John L. Dube" shown in French on Mali's national television TM2 on Thursday, January 10. The documentary weaves together the life of John Dube, first President-General of the African National Congress, an 82-year old movement that brought about freedom and multiracial democracy in South Africa. The documentary not only shows the incredible vision and energy Dube had but also the various transnational and trans-racial links that made his work so important to South Africa's cultural and political history.

Mary Savina, Charles L. Denison Professor of Geology, Peter Balaam, Associate Professor of English, and Clara Hardy, Professor of Classical Languages, have been selected to participate with colleagues from Coe, Luther, St. Olaf, and Colorado Colleges in a seminar sponsored by the Associated Colleges of the Midwest (ACM) through its Seminars in Advanced Interdisciplinary Learning (SAIL) program.

Gao Hong, Lecturer in Chinese Musical Instruments, recently received the 2013 Sorel Medallion in Recording grant from the Elizabeth & Michel Sorel Charitable Organization, Inc. to support her recording of Lutes Around the World CD. The international grant is awarded to only one female a year to keep musical excellence alive and to help stretch the boundaries for women in music.

Professor of English Timothy Raylor has published an article, "Fertility, Mortality, and Anxiety in Waller’s ‘To my Young Lady Lucy Sidney’ and Marvell’s ‘The Picture of Little T.C. in a Prospect of Flowers,’” in Explorations in Renaissance Culture. The article attempts to rehabilitate a much-loved lyric by the seventeenth-century poet, Andrew Marvell, which in recent years has come under suspicion of a not-so-heavily disguised pedophilia.

Alison Kettering, William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Art History, has published "The Friendship Portraits of Hendrick Goltzius," in Face Book, Studies on Dutch and Flemish Portraiture of the 16th-18th Centuries. The essay examines a group of large, colored chalk portrait drawings of fellow artists created by the Dutch artist Hendrick Goltzius during his trip to Italy in 1590-1591. It argues that these portrait drawings were of pivotal importance in his move from engraving to full-fledged oil painting.

Melinda Russell, Professor of Music, presented "Visualizing Music: Helping Undergraduate Non-Majors Show What They Hear," in November at the College Music Society Meeting in San Diego.  The talk showed how an assignment where students draw a 'map' of a piece can help undergraduates demonstrate their understanding of the structure and features of a piece of music. The work grew out of a VIZ grant to explore musical mapping.

Helena Kaufman, Director of Off-Campus Studies, and Éva Pósfay, Professor of French, presented "De-Familiarizing Europe: Study Curriculum for the Flat World," with colleagues from Paris and Copenhagen, at the December Forum on Education Abroad meeting in Dublin, Ireland. The session focused on program design in the dynamically changing European context. The panelists, representing U.S. colleges and European study abroad organizations, shared best practices in holistic design of curriculum that situates in national, regional, and European contexts but also de-familiarizes Europe as a destination.

Cathy Yandell, W.I. and Hulda F. Daniell Professor of French Literature, Language, and Culture, delivered a paper, "Learning through the Body in the Blasons anatomiques du corps féminin," at the Modern Language Association conference in Boston. In her paper, Yandell argues that this famous collection of anatomical poems, known for its humor and bawdiness, had an important heuristic function in Renaissance France. Not only did it teach readers about sex, gender, and the symbolic body, but it also revealed the political and religious preoccupations of the moment.