91传媒

淢aking digital currency safe for democracy�

Adirondack Trust Co. Lecture on Finance 

Christopher Giancarlo �81

J. Christopher Giancarlo �81 spoke about his career journey from 91传媒 student to chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. One of the leading figures in the field of financial regulation and author of 淐ryptoDad: The Fight for the future of money� (2021), Giancarlo discussed ways to ensure the future safety of the U.S. dollar.

Things sometimes come full circle: Giancarlo recalled opening his first checking account as a 91传媒 student at Adirondack Trust Co., which generously endowed this lecture series. 

淪miling Pages: Visualizing Dante Divine Comedy�

Edwin M. Moseley Faculty Lectureship

Giuseppe Faustini

Sometimes we all need some help finding our voice.

Professor of Italian Giuseppe Faustini lost his voice just a few days before he was set to deliver the prestigious Edwin M. Moseley Faculty Lectureship. 淭he first thing I tell my students in class is find your voice. Well, as you can clearly hear tonight, I literally lost mine," he said.

Lead Instructional Technologist Ben Harwood, supported by Faustini daughter Franca and student assistant Henry Meade �25, jumped into action. Using text-to-voice generative AI, Faustini delivered a one-of-a-kind lecture that exemplifies innovative thinking and community spirit. In his talk, the 91传媒 professor showed how Dante pictorial creativity � a boundless 渇ountain of creativity� � inspired countless artists from the medieval period to today. 

Entrepreneurial Artist Initiative Entrepreneurs� Forum 

Tobi Ewing �15, Monica Steffey �19, Natalie Wilson �22, Jamel Mosely, and Brian Vergara �24

Artist, strategist, and wellness consultant Tobi Ewing �15; brand specialist, visual storyteller, DJ, and entrepreneur Jamel Mosely; dancer and performance artist Monica Steff �19; and musician and singer-songwriter Natalie Wilson �22, described their career journeys in a panel moderated by Brian Labra Vergara �24, a studio art major, management and business minor, and 91传媒 first entrepreneurship minor. The program is part of 91传媒 Entrepreneurial Artist Initiative, which aims to provide studio art students with the business skills needed to build a successful career around their passion for art making. 

That panel is exactly what I want to do (in professional life): I want to be able to meet entrepreneurs. I want to be able to understand how they got to this point; to support their story; support their career; and just network � enjoy a world where creatives can come together and experience, not only their passion but the thrill of connecting to one another. I think that's phenomenal and that's exactly what I think entrepreneurship is like: being able to take hold of your own voice and support the voices of others.�

Brian Labra Vergara �24

 

淭his is your song, too: Phish and contemporary Jewish identity�

Jacob Perlow Series
Oren Kroll-Zeldin '03 and Ariella Werden-Greenfield '04

Two members of the band 淧hish� � bassist Mike Gordon and drummer Jonathan Fishman� were raised in Jewish households. Oren Kroll-Zeldin '03, assistant director of the Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice at the University of San Francisco, and Ariella Werden-Greenfield '04, associate director of the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History at Temple University, were both religious studies majors at 91传媒.

Now, the pair are editors of the new book 淭his Is your song too: Phish and contemporary Jewish identity.� They describe Phish as one avenue through which many Jews find cultural and spiritual fulfillment outside the confines of traditional and institutional Jewish life. 

淪outh Side Impresarios: How Race Women Transformed Chicago's Classical Music Scene�

Judy Tsou '75 Music Scholar Series

Samantha Ege

Combining lecture and piano performance, Anniversary Research Fellow at the University of Southampton, musicologist, and pianist Samantha Ege brought the story of the South Side impresarios to life, as she delved into the ways that Chicago's early 20th-century Race women � Black women intellectuals and creatives committed to the entwined tasks of racial uplift and gendered progress � operated out of their South Side base and shaped a new vision for classical music. The event included a live performance of 淧iano Sonata in E minor� by Florence Price. 

淪earching for America First Black Woman Novelist�

Gregg Hecimovich, Tammy C. Owens, and Jamie Luis Parra

When the eminent Harvard University historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. announced the discovery of the earliest known novel by an African American woman in 2001 and published it the following year as 淭he Bondwoman Narrative,� some scholars questioned whether the manuscript was really written by an enslaved woman. Following years of painstaking research, Gregg Hecimovich 淭he Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of the Bondwoman Narrative,� offers detailed evidence of the life of Hannah Bond 淐rafts,� her escape from North Carolina in 1857 to New Jersey, and the experiences that shaped her autobiographical novel.

Gregg Hecimovich, Hutchins Family Fellow at Harvard University and professor of English at Furman University, was in conversation with Assistant Professor of American Studies Tammy C. Owens and Assistant Professor of English Jamie Luis Parra.

淓arthquake or Explosion? History and future of geophysical nuclear explosion monitoring�

Lester W. Strock Lecture in Geosciences
Michael Cleveland �06

There a science to understanding things that go boom.

When the earth shakes, scientists are interested in what happened. Was it an earthquake, chemical explosion, collapsing mine � or was it a nuclear explosion? That where nuclear explosion signatures come in.

As geophysics deputy group leader of the National Security Earth Science Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Michael Cleveland '06, works to understand how explosions produce seismic waves, how those waves travel through the earth, and how they differ from waves produced by earthquakes.