literature, music, drama
writing across boundaries
I’m a comparatist who looks for surprising yet meaningful ways to combine literature, music, and drama: opera and blackface, Greek lyric and Welsh song, new media and Old Time Radio. Using interdisciplinary approaches I connect subjects, institutions, and people that too often remain separated.
leading across boundaries
I’m an educational leader who values the creation of community as much as a challenging curriculum and has seen how successful students benefit from feeling a sense of belonging as well as reading books. But this means reading out to those who stand at the outskirts of power.
blending theory and practice
Questions of adaptation fascinate me. Whether I’m composing a song cycle out of the musical and literary motifs that open each chapter of W. E. B. Du Bois’ Souls of Black Folk. Or writing about how Wagner translates ancient Greek poetry and drama into German nationalist opera. Or directing students in a remake of Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds into a podcast about a computer hack into their own private lives.