Interdisciplinary Arts Class Notes (2019)

Updates from Alumni • May 2019

Topical updates provided by alumni of the School of Interdisciplinary Arts. Are you willing to share your news and accomplishments, or simply let us know how you're doing? Please use our update form here.

Astrid Kaemmerling (PhD '16)
Dr. Kaemmerling is a German born artist, scholar and educator based in San Francisco, CA. Since 2017, Kaemmerling has been conducting walking art research in the Bay Area. Her participatory walking project, The Walk Discourse, is getting ready to host Walkshops in New Orleans. 

Monica Gontovnik (PhD '15)
Dr. Gontovnik works full time at Universidad del Norte, Colombia in the Humanities and Philosophy Department. In 2016 she published her 7th poetry collection: SHIR, and in 2018 she finished Umbral (threshold), a performance & installation in Barranquilla, Colombia. This creative research project was an attempt to understand the different forms in which one distinguishes between the "inside" and the "outside," using video documentation of shadows and sounds recorded inside the artist's home, and diverse philosophical texts about liminality and poetic gesture. 

Nathaniel Wallace (PhD '14)
Dr. Wallace's essay, The 'Inside' of Lovecraft’s Supernatural Horror in the Visual Arts, was published in Lovecraftian Proceedings 2 (2017) by Hippocampus. He has another paper, The Cosmic Drone of Azathoth, also set for publication in the upcoming 2019 book Lovecraftian Proceedings 3, with Hippocampus. Wallace completed his doctoral studies in Visual Arts & Film with the School of Interdisciplinary Arts, and is currently a sponsored programs manager with the office of research at Ohio University.

Jennifer Goodlander (PhD '10) 
Dr. Goodlander was given tenure and promoted to Associate Professor at Indiana University. She moved from theatre to comparative literature department, and is excited to now be teaching with a concentration in comparative arts. She is the Director of the Southeast Asian and ASEAN Studies Program, and her second book, Puppets and Cities: Articulating Identities in Southeast Asia, published by Bloomsbury Methuen Drama in December. This book addresses how puppetry complements and combines with urban spaces to articulate present and future cultural and national identities. She will be spending May and June in Indonesia researching arts and social change related to Islam in Yogyakarta (where there will certainly be more puppets!). 

Jason Hartz  (PhD '10)
Currently Assistant Professor of Art History and Chair of the Department of Art & Design at Adrian College, Dr. Hartz previously served as Director of Institutional Research at Siena Heights University, Michigan.

Carissa Massey (PhD '09)
Dr. Massey is the Dean of Graduate Studies at Adrian College, where she is a Full Professor of Art History. Massey's doctoral research was in Art History, Aesthetics, and Gender Theory at Ohio University.

Mohammad Ali Bhatti (PhD '98)
A full time painter currently living in Houston, TX,  Dr. Bhatti teaches part time with the Watercolor Society of Houston. In 2011 he retired from full time teaching as Professor and Director of the Institute of Art and Design Jamshoro, Sindh, Pakistan. Today he enjoys participating in art shows, conducting art workshops, and spending time with artist fellows. Explore his work on his artist site artistmohammadali.com. 

Sharran F. Parkinson (PhD '94)
Dr. Parkinson is currently Professor and Chair, Department of Design, Texas Tech University. Previously she was Chair of Interior Design at Virginia Commonwealth University (2004-2014). In 2018 she published a paper Design for Sight: A Typology System for Low-Vision Design Factors, in the Journal of Interior Design, which defined the primary design problems in the low vision user’s environment, in order to determine how to improve perception of the interior environment.

Herbert Gottfried (PhD '74)
In 2018, Gottfried published, Erie Railway Tourist, 1854-1886, Transporting Visual Culture, with the Lehigh University Press. This book explores how the Erie Railway, in developing a series of sophisticated travel guides, made significant contributions to nineteenth-century visual culture and shaped the social life of Americans. Gottfried is a Professor Emeritus with Cornell University, now enjoying retirement in Tulsa, OK.

Peter L. Goss (PhD '73)
An architectural historian and documentary photographer, Professor Emeritus, Peter L. Goss earned his Ph. D. in Comparative Arts at OHIO in 1973 with a focus on Art & Architectural History. He taught architectural history at the College of Architecture + Planning, Univ. of Utah for 39 years, retiring in 2009. Since retirement, Goss have been working on a biography of Taylor Woolley, a Salt Lake architect who worked for Frank Lloyd Wright, to be published by University of Utah Press in the near future. In addition, Goss was recently commissioned to document the events of this year's 150th Anniversary of the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad at Promontory Point, Utah. 

---

Read more stories from Spring 2019 issue of the School of Interdisciplinary Arts Alumni News.