News from The Johns Hopkins University » Center for Africana Studies

Johns Hopkins Artist-in-Residence, Mezzo-soprano Stephanie McGuire, at the BMA

Amy Lunday — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 18:02:42 +0000

THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS
901 S. Bond St., Suite 540
Baltimore, Maryland 21231

March 29, 2012
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACT: Amy Lunday
443-287-9960 office
410-804-2551 cell
acl@jhu.edu

Stephanie McGuire

Mezzo-soprano Stephanie McGuire will present a free performance of her solo operatic theater piece, Mezzo Laid Bare, on Thursday, April 5, at 7 p.m., in the auditorium at the Baltimore Museum of Art, 10 Art Museum Drive in Baltimore. McGuire is visiting The Johns Hopkins University’s Homewood campus this spring as the 2012 artist-in-residence with the Center for Africana Studies in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences.

Joining McGuire will be pianist Noby Ishida, and acclaimed theater director Tamilla Woodard to present Mezzo Laid Bare, an unorthodox and uncensored look into the world of classical performance and the struggle between an artist’s public and private selves. The show, a mash-up of classical recital and downtown theater, weaves traditional recital repertoire, operatic arias and monologue into an intimate solo performance. Language not suited for children younger than 13. RSVP to Katie Cook at 410-516-5581 or kcook16@jhu.edu.

McGuire is a lyric mezzo-soprano who enjoys performing in a diverse range of venues, from opera houses to recital halls to jazz clubs. Her work has been seen on stages at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Boston’s Symphony Hall, Birdland, and B.B. King Blues Club & Grill. She has performed with New York City Opera as well as the Boston Pops Orchestra, Boston Classical Orchestra, and Key West Symphony Orchestra. Highlights of Stephanie’s 2011-2012 season have included Ruggiero (Alcina) with Satori Opera, Bradamante (Alcina) with New York Lyric Opera Theater, and Dritte Dame (Die Zauberflöte) with The Muses Project. In October 2010, she performed excerpts of Tania León’s Scourge of Hyacinths with Remarkable Theater Brigade at Carnegie Hall. McGuire earned a doctorate in psychoacoustics, the study of the relationship between the physical and perceptual characteristics of a sound, from the University of Oxford.

In addition to this performance, McGuire will offer a free vocal master class to students and staff on the Homewood campus. McGuire is the fourth artist-in-residence brought to the campus by the Center for Africana Studies; previous visiting artists are visual artist Renee Stout, photographer and multimedia artist Hank Willis Thomas, and the American Studio Orchestra. The residencies came out of a fall 2006 gathering of a group of Africana Studies faculty drawn from throughout the Krieger School. The idea was to bring to campus nationally known artists who could address the representation of race through imagery

Seating for Mezzo Laid Bare begins at 6:30 p.m., with the show beginning at 7 p.m. The performance time is 90 minutes, and will be followed by Q&A.

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Media Advisory: Johns Hopkins University and the Afro-American Newspaper Launch Event

Tracey Reeves — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:49:17 +0000

Office of Communications
Johns Hopkins University
901 South Bond Street, Suite 540
Baltimore, Maryland 21231
Phone: 443-287-9960 | Fax: 443-287-9920

February 21, 2012

TO: Assignment editors, reporters, producers

FROM: Brian Shields / 410-516-8337 (office) / 410-631-2890 (cell) / bshields@jhu.edu

RE: Johns Hopkins University and the Afro-American Newspaper Launch Event

The Johns Hopkins University will host a celebration at 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 22, to mark the launch of the online archival database of the Afro-American newspaper, which will provide access to more than 120 years of local, national, and international coverage and images from the paper’s morgue. (http://morgue.afro.com/AfroArchon/)

Development of the database took three years and was a collaborative effort led by Johns Hopkins’ Sheridan Libraries’ Center for Educational Resources and the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences’ Center for Africana Studies. The Mellon Foundation provided a $476,000 grant for the project, which supported the work of organizing and describing the archives of the Afro with its more than 2,000 boxes of materials and more than 1 million photographs, as well as newspaper clippings and correspondence.

Faculty members involved in the project and the archivist for the Afro will deliver remarks in the Gilman Hall atrium on the university’s Homewood campus.

The Sheridan Libraries encompass the Brody Learning Commons, the Milton S. Eisenhower Library, the Albert D. Hutzler Reading Room in Gilman Hall, the John Work Garrett Library at Evergreen Museum & Library, the George Peabody Library at Mt. Vernon Place, and the DC Regional Libraries. Together these collections provide the major research library resources for Johns Hopkins University. The mission of the Sheridan Libraries is to advance research and teaching by providing information resources, instruction, and services. The libraries were rededicated in 1998 to reflect the extraordinary generosity of Mr. and Mrs. R. Champlin Sheridan.

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Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/ Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases are available at the same address.

Sheridan Libraries Announce Completion of Afro American Newspaper Digital Archive Project

Tracey Reeves — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 15:41:40 +0000

THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
OFFICE OF COMMUNICATIONS
901 S. Bond Street/Suite 540
Baltimore, Maryland 21231

February 21, 2011
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACT: Brian Shields
410-516-8337
bshields@jhu.edu

The Sheridan Libraries’ Center for Educational Resources (CER) announced today the launch of an online database (http://morgue.afro.com/AfroArchon/) describing the archival materials held by the Afro American Newspaper. The three-year project, administered jointly by CER and the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences’ Center for Africana Studies, was funded with a $476,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

“The Afro holds an amazing collection of historical documents and images related to 20th century African American history,” said Moira Hinderer, who served as the project manager and is a lecturer in the university’s Center for Africana Studies. “The partnership between the Afro and Johns Hopkins makes these materials more accessible to scholars, students, and the public. With historic photographs of everything from Tuskegee Airmen to civil rights protests to local weddings and graduations, the database has something for everyone interested in history.”

Founded in 1892, the Afro has been a source for local, national, and international news for 120 years. During that time, the Afro preserved a large amount of historical materials, including more than one million photographs of African American life in Baltimore and beyond.

“This newly digitized access provides a wonderful window to an amazing resource base that will significantly enrich our knowledge and understanding—not only of our local Baltimore history but also the history of our nation and the wider world,” said Franklin W. Knight, Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Professor of History and Director of the Center for Africana Studies.

Mellon Foundation funding supported the work of organizing and describing the archives of the Afro. Over the course of this project, researchers and interns—including students from Johns Hopkins University, Morgan State University, and the University of Maryland—uncovered more than 2,000 boxes of materials filled with photographs, newspaper clippings, and correspondence. The newspaper’s morgue contains more than 150,000 subject files with clippings, images, and correspondence dating back to the 1920s.

“This project provides a wonderful model for collaboration among organizations that each, in its own way, is committed to preserving and making accessible a record of the past. It has been a special honor for us at Johns Hopkins to help make better known the remarkable history and achievements of our neighbor, the Afro Newspaper. We are all very much looking forward to the next phase of this endeavor,” said Winston Tabb, Sheridan Dean of University Libraries and Museums.

With the completion of this project, the Afro and Johns Hopkins are now beginning a new project designed to create online exhibits of the most interesting materials from the archives. As with the earlier effort, this initiative will involve collaboration among staff from the Afro’s archives, Sheridan Libraries, and student interns from Johns Hopkins and other area colleges.

A celebration to mark the launch of the online database will be held on Wednesday, Feb. 22 at 5:00 pm in the Gilman Hall atrium on Johns Hopkins University’s Homewood campus.

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Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.jhu.edu/news_info/news/ Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

Johns Hopkins Historian John R. Russell-Wood dies

Tracey Reeves — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 20:29:34 +0000

August 19, 2010
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Tracey A. Reeves
443-287-9960
treeves@jhu.edu

Anthony John R. Russell-Wood, the Herbert Baxter Adams Professor of History at The Johns Hopkins University and a widely published expert in the history and culture of pre-Columbian and colonial Latin America, died Aug. 13, after a brief illness.

A faculty member at Johns Hopkins since 1971, Russell-Wood, 70, was a prolific author, and one of the world’s foremost historians of Brazil and the Portuguese seaborne empire.

His voracious appetite for knowledge and the impressive breadth of his interests was reflected in his many publications on administrative and urban history, history of art, technology, public health, women, race, slavery, and historiography. He wrote or edited 10 books, most recently Slavery and Freedom in Colonial Brazil (2002), and had more than 80 contributions to scholarly articles. Dr. Russell-Wood’s eclectic research interests led to a teaching portfolio that was just as diverse; he taught graduate seminars on Brazil and colonial Latin America, and undergraduate courses such as The Age of Exploration, The African Diaspora, Shipwreck and Empire, and Gold and Society. His stature within his field of work was often leveraged for video and film documentaries shown on National Public Television, and the History Channel.

Anthony John Russell-Wood delighted in teaching and nurturing his students and in guiding graduate level candidates through their dissertations. In the classroom, former students praised his even-handedness and availability to answer questions or offer support. But he went beyond the books, often holding “refugee parties” at his home, inviting those students who stayed in town rather than go home for the Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter holidays, to dine and mingle with his own family. His charisma lent itself to offering both grace and charm to any conversation in which he was a part.

William T. Rowe, chairman of the History Department and the John and Diane Cooke Professor of Chinese History, called Russell-Wood the “solid backbone of Hopkins’ history department for many decades.”

“John was the one colleague you could always count on for help, or turn to for advice,” Rowe said. “He graciously mentored me ever since my own arrival here, as he has so many others thereafter. It is no exaggeration to say that he was loved by us all.”

Russell-Wood served as director of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences’ Program in Latin American Studies and twice as chairman of the History Department, from 1984 to 1990, and from 1996 to 1999. He also contributed significantly to the Center for Africana Studies and served on the Academic Council at the university’s Homewood campus. He won tenure in 1976, and in 2001was named to the endowed Herbert Baxter Adams Professorship in History, where he succeeded his friend, the late Philip Curtin, founder of U.S. scholarly studies in African history.

“John was held in great affection by his colleagues, students, and staff, and he was known for his compassion, and his generosity, as well as his wry sense of humor,” said Michela Gallagher, interim dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. “He will be deeply missed.”

In describing why he chose to become a historian, Russell-Wood wrote in his curriculum vitae that his interest in the discipline was not a case of “love at first sight.” Rather, he said it was “derived from the gradual realization that many of the sources I was reading on medieval Portugal or the chronicles of the Portuguese in Asia, from the perspective of a student of literature or because of their philological content, possessed a strong historical component which I found irresistible.”

“I am a firm believer in how the study and writing and teaching of history can be highly enjoyable and fun,” he wrote.

Outside the office, Russell-Wood treasured the personal time he spent with his family and his dog, Abby, a stray pit bill that his wife, Hannelore, adopted many years ago. Russell-Wood possessed an unrelenting curiosity, a trait he satisfied through constant exploration of the world and people around him. His own youth was spent traveling the far corners of Europe, often times relying on his intrinsic good fortune and the benevolence of others to accommodate him. These early encounters served to mould his magnanimous nature in dealings with all going forward. In raising his sons, Russell-Wood fostered cultural awareness, strong ethics and a firm command of oneself in all situations that life presents. He took his sons on trips to his native Wales and encouraged them to continue traveling and expanding their horizons by visiting other faraway places. It was while on these trips, as well as at home, that Russell-Wood would instill in his sons the importance of hard work and the value of a strong education. John’s love of The Johns Hopkins University contributed to the decision of both Christopher and Karsten to pursue undergraduate and graduate experiences at the institution.

His interests beyond history included cycling, sailing, hiking and bird watching. An avid squash player, he was internationally recognized, representing both Oxford University and the United Kingdom in international competitions.

Away from his work, Russell-Wood was a passionate community volunteer. As chairman of the Maryland Committee for the Humanities, he was asked in 1981 to serve on the Maryland Heritage Committee to organize and coordinate Baltimore County’s celebration of the state’s 350^th anniversary. In 1983, Russell-Wood received gubernatorial and mayoral citations for public service.

Russell-Wood’s early schooling was at Rossall School in North West England’s Lancashire area where both his mother and father were educators. Later, he would go on to earn his Bachelor of Arts and Master of Arts degrees from the University of Oxford, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in modern history from Oxford. He was mentored by the late Hugh Trevor-Roper, Earl Dacre and late Sir Peter Russell, and the late Charles Boxer of the University of London. Boxer and Russell especially reassured and reinforced Russell-Wood’s delight in education. He also held a diploma in Portuguese studies from Coimbra University.

British by birth, AJR Russell-Wood’s life identity was intimately bound to Portugal and Brazil. Pursuing his studies, completing academic research, and supporting local charitable trusts for indigent education, he spent over 6 years living in Brazil. Russell-Wood was awarded numerous honors during his career, including the Portuguese National Order of Knighthood, Commander of the Order of Dom Henrique (Comendador da Ordem do Infante), presented to him by the president of Portugal. He was also accorded the title of “Benemerito” by the Santa Casa da Misericordia of Bahia for his contribution to scholarship. In 2000, Russell-Wood was named Commander of the International Order of Merit of the Misericordias, and in 2002, he was made Officer of the Order of Rio Branco (Oficial da Orderm DeRio Branco). In 2006, he was granted honorary citizenship in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil.

Anthony John R. Russell-Wood is survived by his wife of 37 years, Hannelore, his two sons, Christopher and Karsten, and their wives, and by four grandchildren, Karrigan, Elisabeth, Isabelle, and Haviland.

Funeral services will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 21, at the Cathedral of the Incarnation, located at 4 East University Parkway.