Congratulations to our Hirschhorn Award Nominees and Winners!

Draper would like to congratulate our 2011-2012 Hirschhorn Award nominees and winners! The Hirschhorn is given annually to the most outstanding thesis written by one of our students during the previous year. Theses are judged on the originality of the project, the strength of the research, and the quality of the writing.

This year we had thirteen total nominees and a tie for the award! The winners were Joey McGarvey (May 2012) and Scott Kaplan (January 2012). Their thesis titles and abstracts are below.

Our nominees were:

Christopher Cappelutti (May 2012)
The Many Faces of Ulysses: Joyce and Dante Rewrite Tradition

Michelle Dennis (May 2012)
Unyielding Passions: Reexamining Sentimental Fiction

Nick Gutierrez (January 2012)
Some Small Measure of Hope for the Possibility of Meaning: Reading the Ethics of Literature and the Literature of Ethics

Sarah Latanshyn (September 2011)
"From Uzhhorod there is a road" to Lemkovyna: Music and Identity Among the Lemkos

Tamir Morag (September 2011)
Public Atmosphere and Policy Making in Israel on the Eve of the Six Day War

Beatriz Olivetti (January 2012)
Conceptual Strategies: Curating Emptiness and Performance at the 28th Sao Paulo Biennial

Ryan Petersen (May 2012)
Heavy Metal Warriors and The Monster-Terrorist-Fag: subcultural Biopolitics and Heavy Metal Masculinity in America's War on Terror

Cara Ryan (May 2012)
American Catholics Meeting Islam: Soidarity, Partnerships and Resistance

Zeinab Saiwalla (May 2012)
Unpacking Rituals: Understanding What Lies Beneath Two Commonplace Dawoodi Bohra Practices

Roy Schwartz (May 2012)
Is Superman Circumcised? The Secret (Jewish) Identity of Superheroes

Eric Silver (May 2012)
Teacher/Preacher: Secular Proselytization in a Classroom Setting

And our winners:

Scott Kaplan
From an Elegant Despair to a Moral Exuberence: A Search for Utopian Feeling in Tony Kushner's Theatre of the Fabulous

Abstract:
In this paper, I will be exploring the political theatre of Tony Kushner and his Theatre of the Fabulous. By breaking down the various meanings attributed to fabulousness, I will be attempting to explain an evolution in quer theatre that Kushner is actively pursuing from the Theatre of the Ridiculous to his Theatre of the Fabulous. I will argue that Kushner’s methodology for this change is related to the way in which he politicizes feeling within two of his most Brechtian plays: A Bright Room Called Day and Slavs!. In these two plays, I will examine how Kushner’s characters both indulge in a hopeless complacent feeling I will refer to as elegant despair as well as willfully and hopelessly struggle with a complicated hopeful and powerful political feeling, which I will refer to as moral exuberance. Through these two emotions, I argue that Kushner’s political theory of the fabulous becomes most apparent, and invite us to imagine a way in which our queer aesthetic can imagine and feel toward utopia.

Joey McGarvey
The Stagecoach and the Pear: The New York Fruit Festival and the Metaphors of Ninetheenth-Century American Authorship

Abstract:
“The Stagecoach and the Pear” is divided into two chapters. The first takes a primarily historical approach and represents the first real exegesis of the Complimentary Fruit and Flower Festival, an event hosted by the New York Book Publishers’ Association on September 27, 1855. The event brought together seven hundred booksellers, publishers, and authors in New York City to celebrate the decade’s literary success. Significantly, as many as fifty—and probably far less—of those who attended were female authors. In this first chapter, I ask the question: Why fruit? Why did the Association’s secretary, publisher George Palmer Putnam, decide his menu would consist almost entirely of produce and pastries (and would entirely omit alcoholic beverages)? One clear answer is as an enticement to these women, who were both apprehensive about attending and phenomenal sources of profit to the publishers who could gain their trust. As I develop the macrohistorical themes of the Festival in a way that has not previously been done, I also reveal the Festival as an active site of negotiation among some of the most prominent men and women of letters at a highly charged moment in literary history. Specifically, I argue that male publishers develop a metaphor for authorship—particularly female authorship—through fruit, allowing them to treat these women as commodities.

In the largely literary second chapter, I theorize a genre of women’s writing that I call the tale of mobility. Here, I claim that the women writers invited to the Festival had begun to develop their own metaphor for authorship through periodical tales of travel and place beginning in the 1830s. This metaphor stressed experience over commodification, and suggests both women’s excitement and anxiety about authorship. In both chapters, I repeatedly draw on a previously untapped archive, the New York Public Library’s collection of over 190 response letters from authors and other literary notables invited to the Festival, preserved by Putnam in a scrapbook. These letters, I argue, reveal the dialogue, hopes, and fears inherent in the Festival—and in mid-century literary culture—in an entirely new way.

Congrats, everyone!

Draper's Annual Good News Round Up!

It's been another busy, productive, and exciting year for Draper's students (and alumni!), both in and out of the classroom. The long-awaited Good News Roundup is below; if you have any information you'd like to share about your activities and accomplishments, please email us at draper.program[at]nyu.edu.

 

April Bacon (May 2009) will be starting Adelphi University's Creative Writing MFA Program in the fall. Prior to beginning this program, she'll be attending the NYU SCPS McGhee Division's Summer Writing Intensive in Creative Nonfiction with David Shields.  This is summer program is one that April has participated in before--last summer she attended the Fiction session with Rick Moody, which she says was both "fantastic and transformative." (For more on April's fiction writing and editorial work, see her profile on in.ter.reg.num from 2010 here.)

In April 2012, Emily Colucci (May 2011) curated Michael Alan's Living Installation 'We Are All Living Installations," a 2 show performance at the Dumbo Arts Center in Brooklyn. The featured another Draper grad, Matthew Annis (May 2011), who was one of the show's performers, and also created a six hour soundtrack for the project, featuring collaborations with bands around the world from The Boredoms to Jello Biafra to Geneva Jacuzzi and artists Kenny Scharf and Maripol. The show, which Emily described as "a wild and fun performance/happening" won the Brooklyn Arts Council Regrant. 

After graduating from Draper in January 2009, Russell Fehr entered the Ph.D. program in History at the University of California, Riverside. Russell will advance to candidacy on May 15th and will spend the next year researching his dissertation on civic participation in urban politics during the 1920s, focusing on competing reform visions in Chicago, the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Detroit, and ethnic politics in Boston. He has received support from the Center for Ideas and Society and from the Graduate Division of the UC Riverside for this project. Russell will be returning to New York (and NYU) to complete some of his research at the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives in Bobst in September.

In 2010, David Ferris co-founded 3B, a downtown Brooklyn B&B, with several friends. 3B is "a boutique bed and breakfast cooperatively owned and run by 7 young creators out of our home," and has expanded quite a bit since its opening. It has been profiled at numerous publications, and the co-owners were interviewed for The L Magazine last year (see here).

Eric Hodges (May 2011) recently published  his book Messianism in Ding Ling and Zhou Libo's Novels: A study of The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River and The Hurricane and their literary and philosophical milieu. The book was developed from Eric's Master's thesis at Draper.

This month, Christopher Iverson will be presenting a paper at The University of Washington Germanics Graduate Student Conference 2012: Acceptance in German Literary and Visual Culture. (Draper sent out the call for papers.) The paper he will be presenting is called "Rubble Films on the German and International Screens" and discusses how a short-lived film genre, the Trümmerfilm, or Rubble Film, which was prevalent between 1946 and 1950, dealt with the ideas of victim-hood, complicity, and guilt among the German people after World War II. Chris received Draper's Travel Grant to attend this conference. 

Whitney Johnson (May 2011) has started a short-term position as a Rights Assistant at HarperMedia (a division of the publisher Harper Collins). Whitney is primarily involved in e-book rights, and finds the work fascinating.

Sarah Jones' paper, "When Computers Read: Literary Analysis and Digital Technology" was published in the April/May issue of the Bulletin of American Society for Information Science and Technology. The issue focuses on digital humanities and information visualization. You can read Sarah's paper online here. 

After finishing her Draper degree in January 2012, Jess Krzeminski started working as a College Counselor at Options for College in Manhattan. The job is a great fit for Jess, who explained in a profile this month on the website College Xpress, that "[a]s I was pursuing my M.A. in humanities and social thought at NYU, and was looking toward the necessary next step of applying for jobs, I could not picture myself doing anything but teaching or counseling. I realized that working with students has been my lifelong interest."


Christine Olson will be completing an internship at Villa la Pietra in Florence this summer, one of two collection management internships offered through NYU's Museum Studies department. 

Rafe Posey's short story collection The Book of Broken Hymns has been named a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. The book is the first that Rafe has published, although he has previously published poetry, essays, and short stories and had an essay excerpt anthologized last year. Rafe also published a short story, "Kitten Goes to Sea" in the Poydras Review in May. 

The award ceremony for the Lamdba Literary Award will be in June--good luck, Rafe!

Yehudit Robinson (May 2008) is pleased to announce her engagement to Sam Daitch.

Nancy Ross published her poem "los salmones" in the most recent issue of imanhattan, the journal of NYU's MFA program in Creative Writing in Spanish. You can read her poem (and the rest of the journal) here.  


Over the course of her last semester at Draper, Zeinab Saiwalla (May 2012) completed an internship at the United Nations' UN Women, Asia-Pacific Division

Orla Stapelton's article (co-authored with Maria Besiou) “System Dynamics for Humanitarian Operations,” was published in the Journal of Humanitarian Logistics and Supply Chain Management and has been chosen as a Highly Commended Award Winner at the Emerald - Literati Network Awards for Excellence 2012.

Whitney Walker (January 2012) recently accepted a position on The New York Times' Sales Development team where she is working on their digital media platform marketing strategies and is also responsible for coming up with creative ways for other companies to advertise with the Times, using all of their different media platforms.

Yun Emily Wang appeared with a New York-based contemporary ensemble, The Cabinet, at the annual Hartford Women's Music Festival in March 2012, and will also be performing with the String Orchestra of Brooklyn this month. See the SOB's schedule here. 

Miri Young (May 2012) has recently taken up a position as Manager of Programs and Tours at Judd Foundation (New York and Texas), based in SoHo. She focuses on programming, interpretation and outreach for artist Donald Judd's residence and studio space at 101 Spring Street, which will open to the public June 2013. As one of the founding sites in the program of Historic Artists’ Homes and Studios for the National Trust for Historic Preservation, 101 Spring Street is the only intact, single-use cast-iron building remaining in SoHo. The Judd Foundation’s mission is to maintain and preserve Donald Judd's permanently installed living and working spaces, libraries, and archives in New York and Marfa, Texas.

Miri says that the Judd Foundation will run tours for university groups and has an intern program, and encourages Draperites to be in touch if either of these opportunities are of interest! (She can be reached at myoung@juddfoundation.org)

Congrats to all of you! 

 

Draper's Doctoral Successes: Ph.D. Acceptances 2012

Congratulations to all of our current students and alumni who have been accepted to doctoral programs!

If you would like to add your own Ph.D. news to our list, please email us at draper.program[at]nyu.edu.

• Keith Aksel (alumnus 2010) was accepted to the History program at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
• Hilarie Ashton was accepted to the English program at the CUNY Graduate Center. She will start in fall 2013.
• Leslie Bowman will start the English and Religion program at Claremont Graduate University.
• Michelle Dennis was accepted to the English programs at the University of Wisconsin, Madison and the University of Michigan. She'll be attending the University of Michigan.
• Bejamin Foley (alumnus, 2008) will start at Rutgers' Sociology program.
• Nicholaus Gutierrez (alumnus, Jan. 2012) will start at Berkeley's Rhetoric program in the fall.
  
• Lee Huttner was accepted to the English program at Northwestern
  
• Craig Knox will start his doctoral work at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Toronto. He was awarded four years of full funding.
  
• Sarah Catherine Latanyshyn was accepted to the Ethnomusicology program at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the musicology program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She will attend UCSB with a four year Doctoral Scholars Fellowship 
•  Ji Hyun Lee (alumna, 2010) was accepted to the English programs at Northeastern (with the University Excellence Fellowship), SUNY Stony Brook (with the Graduate Council Fellowship), and Cornell (with funding). Ji Hyun will attend Cornell in the fall where she is looking forward to the opportunity to study trauma with Cathy Caruth.
  
• Daniel Libatique will attend Boston University's Classics program in the fall.
• Eric Longfellow was accepted to the English Studies and Creative Writing program at Illinois State University.
• Pamela Nogales will start at NYU's American History program in the fall.
• William Paris (alumnus, Jan. 2012) was accepted to the Philosophy program at the University of Pennsylvania
  
• Yun Emily Wang was accepted to the Ethnomusicology programs at Memorial University and the University of Toronto, as well as the Humanities program at Concordia University. She will start at the University of Toronto in the fall.
• Lindsey Whitmore was accepted to the Women's and Gender Studies program at Rutgers and the Cultural Studies program at SUNY Stony Brook. She will start at Rutgers in the fall.

Good luck to all of you!
Please keep us updated on your endeavors!

"We Are Living Installations" -- 2 Performances, 4/21 -- With Draper Alumni: Emily Colucci (Curator) / Matthew Annis (Performer)

See below for information about "We Are All Living Installations," a two show performance on April 21 which two former Draperites are involved in! Emily Colucci (May 2011) curated the show and Matthew Annis (May 2011) is one of the performers. Congrats to both Emily and Matthew!

***

Michael Alan’s Living Installation
“We Are All Living Installations”Curated by Emily Colucci
Dumbo Arts Center (111 Front Street, Suite 212)
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Two Shows: 7pm and 10:15pm
Tickets $15 online; $20 at the door
*Tickets and more information  at:http://www.michaelalanart.com/art/upcoming-projects/

Michael Alan’s Living Installation is proud to present Brooklyn Arts Council Community Art Fund Regrant-awarded project We Are All Living Installations, 2 shows in one night curated by Emily Colucci, hosted by the Dumbo Arts Center.

Revealing and forging the connections between Michael, the performers, the collaborating musicians on the soundtrack and the audience, We Are All Living Installations shows that all people, no matter our differences, experience the same pain, emotions, consequences and joys.  From a same-sex couple stuck together to a baby dancing to Michael’s own mom, the performers will move, dance and act as if in a live music video and Alan, who will be painting, tin-foiling, wrapping, sculpting, spraying, smashing and transforming them into living sculptures, prove that we all are made up of bodies and minds that must endure whether it is a 6 hour performance or the twists and turns of life.

A New York staple for 7 years, Michael Alan’s Living Installation has recently evolved into a larger musical project entitled Sound Drawing, gathering together musicians from across the globe to collaborate with Alan  on a live soundtrack for the Living Installations. The soundtrack from Sound Drawing ranges from collaborations with Alan and artist Kenny Scharf, Jello Biafra from the Dead Kennedys, Vas Deferens Organization, Jibz Cameron, Japanther, Maripol, Renaldo from Renaldo and the Loaf, Ramsey Jones, Tim "Love" Lee, Jeff and Jane Hudson, Geneva Jacuzzi, Noah Becker, and many, many more. A new way of merging art and music and bringing it into a gallery and performance space, the Living Installation asks the audience to slow down, listen to the soundtrack, watch the performers act out the music while Alan turns himself, the performers and the space into an installation. Michael Alan Alien's 35-song album, including songs with Japanther, Kenny Scharf, Vas Deferens Organization, Jeff and Jane Hudson and more as well as solo tracks by Michael Alan Alien, will be released on Bed Bug Records the night of the show.

With 5 of Michael Alan’s drawings and paintings placed around the space, becoming performers themselves with their drawn movement, a sculpture that will be built during the show, a photo slideshow of past Living Installation photos by Worm Carnevale and a video of the Living Installation by Michael Alan, We Are All Living Installations is a celebration of creativity in all of its forms. Despite our differences, all people forget so much in life. We Are All Living Installations is about coming together and creating an experience that you will not forget.
  

Performers: Dave Modello, Kim De'ville, Matthew Annis, John Holly, Michelle Woo and Michael Alan Alien

Musical Collaborators: Kenny Scharf, Jello Biafra from the Dead Kennedys, Japanther, Vas Deferens Organization, Shinji Masuko of The Boredoms, Jibz Cameron, Geneva Jacuzzi, Maripol, Renaldo from Renaldo and the Loaf, Jeff and Jane Hudson, Ramsey Jones, Tim "Love" Lee, Kingdom Scum, Worm Carnevale, Noah Becker, Johnny 23 Virus Crew Journalists, Ellis G, Raindrop (my mom), Woof woof (my dad) and Bed Bug.

Michael Alan’s Living Installation We Are All Living Installations is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC).
ABOUT BAC'S COMMUNITY ARTS GRANTSBAC Community Arts Grants help fund project-based work by individual artists and nonprofit organizations in all artistic disciplines, and support capacity building for Brooklyn-based non-profit organizations.  Grants are made possible through the generous support of: the Decentralization Program of the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA); the New York State Assembly and Senate; the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA); New York City Council; JPMorgan Chase Foundation; and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz.
BAC is the borough’s leading nonprofit organization supporting artists and cultural groups in all disciplines.  BAC reaches hundreds of thousands of artists and audience members each year through music, dance, film and visual arts programs, web-based directories and communities, arts education, urban folk arts initiatives, grants, training programs and artists services.

 Michael Alan’s Living Installation We Are All Living Installations is also sponsored by:

   http://www.newyorkcostumes.com/                           http://davinciartistsupply.com/                   http://www567framing.com

Draper Alumna Dinika Amaral Reading in the "NYU Emerging Writers" series, 4/20

Draper alumna Dinika Amaral, now a student in NYU's Creative Writing MFA program, will be reading from her novel in progress, "The Devil's Bathtub," as part of the "NYU Emerging Writers Reading Series," on April 20. She will be reading alongside Anne Enright (winner of the Man Booker prize) and other CWP students. 

Congrats, Dinika!

NYU Emerging Writers Reading Series

April 20

7:00 PM

KGB Bar: 85 E. 4th Street

Dinika suggests that anyone attending try to get there on the early side--the space is small and these events are usually crowded.

 

Call for Submissions: Hercircle Ezine

Diane Leon-Ferdico, a Draper alumna and current adjunct associate professor of arts in NYU's School of Continuing and Professional Studies is the interim Arts Editor of Hercircle ezine, a magazine of women’s creative arts and activism. Ms. Leon-Ferdico would like to solicit article submissions from current Draper student-artists who who would like to write about their process as it relates to a particular social or political project. Hercircle is not just interested in creative arts such as sculpting or painting--an article about your academic research could also potentially qualify for inclusion in the journal. 

The journal's call for submissions, as well as a recent sample article is below. Please send your questions and/or submissions to Diane Leon-Ferdico directly at DL4[at]nyu.edu.

***

Hercircle ezine is a magazine of women’s creative arts and activism.

We are looking for women who engage in their creative process in the visual arts, poetry and on topics that profile a social/political viewpoint. 

What we want is an essay between 800-1500 words that capture your process in the studio, how and why you create or write what you do.  Up to four images may be included or a copy of a poem.  Video excerpts from the artist may also be considered.

Please look at the website to become familiar with what we cover: www.hercircleezine.com

See a recent sample article ("My Story: Undocumented") written by Kat Chua here: http://www.hercircleezine.com/2012/03/01/my-story-undocumented/

Kindly send your submissions to:

Diane Leon Ferdico

DL4[at]nyu.edu

Join us to start off the spring semester right and honor the achievements of our September 2011 and January 2012 graduates!

Draper's Spring Party and Graduate Celebration
Friday, January 27
Starts at 5:00 PM
Draper Map Room: 14 University Place, 1st Floor
Food and drink will be served
RSVPs to draper.program@nyu.edu

Alumna Hilarie Ashton on the CAAS Conference in Ottawa

Draper alumna Hilarie Ashton (January 2011) attended the annual conference of the Canadian Association of American Studies in Ottawa last weekend where she presented a paper. She wrote about her experience at the conference, which you can read belo. Congrats, Hilarie!

This weekend, I attended the annual conference of the Canadian Association of American Studies (CAAS) in Ottawa, Ontario. The conference, sponsored by Carleton University’s Centre for Research in American Studies, took as its theme the aesthetics of renewal, an idea that caught and kept my attention from the abstract submission stage through the conference itself. I came away from the plenaries and sessions more interested than ever in the place of American Studies on the world stage and the intersections and interactions that it can have with other disciplines (in particular national, ethnic, and cultural studies).

The paper I presented is entitled "The Doppelganger Artist: Reuse and/or Originality in Postmodernity and Popular Music." Based on the interesting ways in which it fit with the other papers on the panel, I'm planning to expand it for publication. My basic argument is that the phenomenon I'm calling the "entertainment doppelganger," or artist who creates a persona or a work by adopting elements of another artist's persona or work, is especially affected by the postmodern era (or whatever might be developing in its place). I argued that these doppelgangers' almost plagiarism, while nothing new, historically, is abetted by our era's free flowing Internet, new media, Twitterpated atmosphere (one of which, it must be said, I am a rather ardent fan). The panel that featured my paper was on remixed music, and there was so much synergy between my paper and the one that preceded it, on Girl Talk and other mashup artists, that I couldn't help but refer to it during my presentation.

Other highlights: a panel entitled "What Do Things Want" that combined papers on kitsch and flea market culture; the politics of photography (subjects including vinyl records and a typed reproduction of On The Road); and the intersections between fashion and (Judeo-Christian) religion. I also highly enjoyed two of the several keynotes: one by Drs. Linda and Michael Hutcheon (she, University Professor in the Department of English and the Centre for Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto, and he, Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto) on opera, and one by Anthony Stewart, a professor of English at Dalhousie University, on the New Black American in Colson Whitehead and in the lyrics of the band Fishbone.

"Ozzy's Leap" by Draper Alumna Dinika Amaral Published

Draper alumna Dinika Amaral (May 2011) has published a short story entitled “Ozzy’s Leap” in Heavenly Tales, an anthology of stories all about “everyday people whose lives were forever changed…simply by the presence of a cat.” Fiona B. McKinney, the anthology’s editor, contacted Dinika and commissioned her story, which Dinika says was inspired by a friend’s cat.

The proceeds from the sale of Heavenly Tales will go to three cat shelters.

Congrats, Dinika!

Alumna Katie Blankenship Answers the Draper Dozen

Draper alumna Katie Blankenship (2009) recently got in touch with us about a career opportunity at the New York City Rock Camp (NYCRC), a nonprofit music education day camp for girls and boys ages 9-17 that she created following her graduation from Draper. We asked Katie to answer some questions about her time at Draper and activities now ('The Draper Dozen'). Her answers are below.






The Draper Dozen

1. When did you graduate from Draper?

2009

2. Did you attend as a full or part-time student?

Full Time

3. Do you still live in New York?

No

4. What do you like the most about New York?

The opportunities available in the arts for both career and leisure, the culture, and the food!

5. What do you dislike the most about New York?

The cost of living

6. What was the topic of your Master’s thesis?

Non-profit art administration

7. Why did you choose to pursue an interdisciplinary degree at Draper?

I was drawn to the wide array of classes and topics of study.

8. What project/career/interest are you pursuing now?

Law and Nonprofit art administration

9. What special activities or projects do you enjoy outside of your academic work and/or career?

Music

10. What was the last book you read for fun?

Ken Follett, Pillars of the Earth

11. What are three things that you wouldn’t want to live without? Music, fresh food, my dog

12. Any words of wisdom for current Draper students?

Be mindful of your student loans and plan ahead on how you will repay them!

Executive Director Position Open at NYC Rock Camp

After graduating from Draper in 2009, alumna Katie Blankenship created the New York City Rock Camp (NYCRC), a nonprofit music education day camp for girls and boys ages 9-17. The NYCRC is now looking for an executive director and Katie asked that we forward the position description to Draper students and alumni. Please see below for more information.

***

NEW YORK CITY ROCK CAMP (NYCRC) IS NOW HIRING!

We’re looking for our new Executive Director.

www.nycrockcamp.org

*****************************************************************************

NYCRC Executive Director:

Organization Description

NYCRC is a music education day camp that focuses on empowering youth through music and building community through shared musical expression. NYCRC is designed to allow New York City youth, regardless of race, class, or creed, freedom of expression and exploration in music and performance, and in so doing, to empower campers to find their own voice, sound, and beat without creative boundary or inhibition.

During one week of the summer, young people ages 9-17 spend five days attending instrument instruction; participating in workshops such as Recording, Songwriting and Photography; and attending band practice. On the first day, campers form and name their own bands and pick two volunteer camp staff members to become their “band managers,” who then guide practices and help campers compose a song. On Saturday, all campers perform their song in a professional showcase, where all campers, supported by an audience of family, friends, and community members, truly transform into rock stars.

Position Overview

The Executive Director oversees all operations of NYCRC including creating and monitoring budgets; organizing, facilitating, developing, and implementing all current and new programs; overseeing staff responsibilities and operations; creating and distributing marketing material to staff; reaching out to donors, corporate sponsors, and foundations; grant research and writing; securing locations for all programs and related events; planning and implementing curriculum for all programs; communicating and administering all program needs to other NYCRC departments such as IT, Marketing, and Fundraising; reporting all NYCRC developments and needs to the Board of Directors; and creating fiscal year financial reports of the Board of Directors.

Duties:

Curriculum development; creating and monitoring budgets; applying for grants; negotiating artist contracts; implementing fund-raising and outreach activities; supervising all program staff, volunteers, and campers, which includes recruitment, selection, and placement; planning and conducting training with staff and volunteers and seeing that the standards set-forth during training are maintained;

interpreting and complying with all camp policies and communicating them to staff, volunteers and campers; ensuring that camp facilities meet established standards before, during, and after camp sessions; maintaining good PR in the community; promoting high morale within camp itself; coordinating and overseeing the execution of the camp program, including volunteer assignments, workshop lesson plans, musical performances, and daily schedule; soliciting and organizing all musical equipment donations.

Required Skills:

We are looking for a candidate that is highly self-motivated, organized, and passionate about non-profit youth art and music programs. Candidate must have leadership experience, and non-profit experience is a plus. Candidate must be computer literate and have experience working in Excel, Word, Google Docs, Gmail, online social media sites, and online newsletter/mass email systems such as Virtual Response, Emma, etc. Candidate should be a self-starter and have the creativity, dedication, and imagination to develop NYCRC into multiple camp sessions and year-round music programming.

* Leadership experience in non-profit administration, including progressively responsible experience and a successful track record in grant writing, individual donations, corporate sponsorships and fundraising events.

*Strong understanding, commitment and passion for New York City Rock Camp’s mission and programs, and an ability to effectively advocate for the organization in a variety of situations and mediums.

*Experience managing budgets, reports, evaluation and staff or volunteer management.

*Excellent communication skills, including public speaking/presentations, phone communication, electronic communication, and written communication. Should have experience with donor correspondence, grant writing as well as communications with media, corporate and foundation contacts.

*Computer literacy including Macintosh OS X, Microsoft Office Suite, social networking, Google Docs.

*Ability to participate and work within a team while also being able to work independently with little supervision.

*Ability to manage and prioritize multiple projects and deadlines.

Salary and Work Hours

This is a part-time salaried position with the opportunity to develop the program into multiple sessions and year-round programming, thereby increasing the hours to full-time and creating a full salary for the Executive Director. We ask for flexibility in scheduling with some availability on mornings, evenings or weekends though our general office hours are M-F 9-5pm.

To Apply

Please send a cover letter, resume, and references to Katie Blankenship, Executive Director, at nycrockandrollcamp@gmail.com.

New York City Rock Camp is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Women, people of color and LGBTQ are encouraged to apply.

Student & Alumni News!

It's been another big year for Draper students and alumni. If you have news to share, please email us at draper.program@nyu.edu and let us know!

Dinika Amaral (May 2011) was accepted to MFA programs at NYU, Queens College, and San Francisco State University. She received a fellowship to attend the program at NYU, where she'll start in the fall.

John Allen (Alumnus, 2010) has started teaching as an adjunct professor at the University of the Pacific. He will be teaching two undergraduate seminars this fall.

Brian Ballard (May 2011) was accepted to Philosophy doctoral programs at the University of Pittsburgh, UC Santa Barbara, CUNY, Purdue, the University of Rochester, and the University of Texas, Austin. He'll be starting at the University of Pittsburgh this fall.

Sarah Broderick (May 2011) was accepted to MFA programs in Creative Writing (fiction) at San Francisco State University, the University of San Francisco, and St. Mary's College (where she was also awarded a fiction scholarship). She will begin at San Francisco State in the fall.

Sarah also presented her thesis, under the condensed title "Puncturing the Skin of a Nation: The (Re)presentation of the Black Vampire in Popular Film," at Brooklyn College's Graduate English Conference in April 2011.

David Colosi (Alumnus, 2006) presented his narrative installation "The Superintendent's Keys" in Steinhardt's 'Broadway Windows' during March 2011. The piece depicted "six narrative vignettes in comic strip-like format" and also included a live performance on opening night.

Halah Darwazeh (May 2011) was accepted to the doctoral program for Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine.

Richard Evans (Alumnus, 2008) is in his second year at the Institute for the Comparative Study of Literature, Arts and Culture at Carleton University in Canada.

Aylet Even-Nur (May 2011) was accepted to the doctoral program in Near Eastern Studies at Berkeley.

Russell Fehr (Alumnus, 2009) will complete his MA in History (in progress to his Ph.D) at the University of California, Riverside in June 2011. He anticipates advancing to Ph.D. candidacy in the spring of 2012.

Ann Halbert-Brooks was accepted to the History doctoral program at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she will focus on Latin American history.

Eric Hodges (May 2011) was accepted to the East Asian Studies doctoral program at NYU.

Scott Kaplan started a media and communications internship at the Austrian Cultural Forum.

Elizabeth Kinsley was accepted to the doctoral program in Rhetoric and Public Culture at Northwestern.

Dani Limos (Alumna, 2010) has been accepted to the London School of Economics where she will begin a MSc in Social Policy and International Development this fall. She plans to focus on microloans in developing countries of Latin America and Africa. Over the summer, Dani will be working at Legacy International with an Indonesian youth exchange, and also complete an internship with the Grameen Foundation.

Mirelle Luecke (Alumna, 2011) was accepted to the the doctoral program in History at the University of Pittsburgh.

Luce Melendez-Robledo (May 2011) will be attending law school at the University of Puerto Rico this fall.

Ji Hyuck Moon (May 2011) will publish his first collection of short stories in Korea this summer.

April Pierce (May 2011) was accepted to D.Phil programs in English literature at Oxford and University College London. She will start at Oxford in the fall.

Shabnam Piryaei's poetry collection Ode to Fragile was published by Plain View Press in October 2010. She also wrote and directed three short films based on poetry from the book, which all screened in the U.S. at the Woodstock Film Festival, the Indie Spirit Film Festival, the Red Rock Film Festival, the Miami Short Film Festival and the Target Art Gallery, and internationally at the Portobello Film Festival, Canterbury Short Film Festival, and the Zebra Poetry Film Festival.

Alexander Ponomareff (May 2011) was accepted to the Comparative Literature doctoral program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Megan Schmidt has been interning at the International Coalition for the Responsibility to Protect since September 2010. She has been using her work at the Coalition to develop a course paper which comparatively examines the crises in Cote d'Ivoire and Libya, international responses, and what this means for the implementation of the Responsibility to Protect.

Megan also published her paper "Chinese and Indian Economic Practices with Africa: Fueling Growth or Undermining Development?" (which she wrote for Topics in Global Histories with Maia Ramnath in fall 2010) in the spring issue of NYU's human rights journal, Humanus.

Draper alumna teaches yoga workshop

2001 Draper graduate Heidi Spear focused on comparative literature and performing arts at NYU, then studied at the Globe Theater in London. Now she has taken her interdisciplinary methods to a physical field: yoga.

Heidi is offering a workshop called "The Yoga of Shakespeare: To Thine Own Self be True" at Kripalu, the yoga retreat center in western Massachusetts. "We use the language and poetry of Shakespeare," explains Heidi, "where it intersects with the inquiry of yoga to develop self-observation without judgment and sink into the layers of creative consciousness to connect that inward place where creativity and inner wisdom reside. It's great for students, teachers, and all who need tools for de-stressing, and tapping into their creative/knowledge space."

Since we love bragging about our alumni, and since we know that de-stressing can be a boon to busy students, we thought we'd pass along the information about Heidi's class (for which no experience with Shakespeare or yoga is necessary). More information is on the Kripalu website.

Draper Alumna Lit Journal--Trans Lit Mag--Call for Submissions!

Draper alumna Christina Phelps (2oo8) contacted us with the following announcement about the online literary journal that she started this fall, Trans Lit Mag. For more information about the journal and information on how to submit see below.

This past fall I started an online literary magazine called trans lit mag. The idea is that it is continuously expanding, quarterly, and name changing. Issue #1, as our first transmission, was called "transmission." Issue # 2 is called "transience" and is ongoing until March 21, when we move on to Issue # 3: "transform." The title isn't so much a theme as a loosely defined guiding principle. You can read all about our call for submissions and our submission guidelines on our blog, where there is also a link to the first issue.

The trans lit mag team has been up to a lot of really exciting things lately. We had our first reading, featuring six talented readers at Txikito (a Basque restaurant in the heart of Chelsea), and we are preparing for Issue #3, transform.

trans lit mag is looking for fiction, poetry, artwork (including a cover), and literary nonfiction. Check out our Submission Guidelines and then send your beautiful work to translitmag@gmail.com.

Special attention will be given to pieces that play with form in some way, but this should be very loosely translated. Transform comes from the Latin word meaning to change in form, and characters often do undergo a change in appearance or character, but we can also be changed by what we experience – as readers, as artists.

Issue #3 will begin March 21 and run through June 20. There are no deadlines.

And forward this to anyone who might be interested. I hope you enjoy reading the magazine as much as I have. Cheers,

Christina

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translitmag.com