As students and faculty are returning from spring break, the Department of Art and Art History is presenting Bricks (I’d Like to Build a Shelter), an art exhibition by office coordinator Marissa Klee-Peregon.
The show will be on view in the Light Fine Arts Gallery through Friday, April 4, with gallery hours from 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 10 a.m.–2 p.m. Friday and Saturday. There will also be an artist talk, with a reception to follow, at 4:15 p.m. on Thursday, April 3.
In the ongoing project, Klee-Peregon sews bricks out of satin and then uses the soft bricks for interventions, installations and performances in the built environment. This project addresses moments of failure and collapse within both social and physical structures; the labor by which those structures are built, maintained and repaired; gendered labor and gender in general; and the desire to hide, safe and comfortable, among that which is beautiful and soft. The exhibition includes a selection of images, objects and videos produced as a part of the project.
“I’m less interested in communicating a specific message than I am in posing questions which I hope viewers will continue to ponder after the show,” Klee-Peregon said. “The questions I want to present are something like, ‘What are the structures of our world—both physical and social—built out of,’ ‘Who built them and how,’ and ‘Who gets to shelter inside those structures and who is left in the cold?’ I’m not trying to answer those questions with my work, but I am trying to suggest that the answers—whatever they may be—will be complicated, contextual, and likely contradictory.”
Klee-Peregon has a bachelor’s degree in art history and studio art from Wellesley College. Support for their project was provided by the Kalamazoo Artistic Directive Initiative, a program of the Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo.
Marissa Klee-Peregon sews bricks out of satin and then uses the soft bricks for interventions, installations and performances in the built environment.
The show “Bricks (I’d Like to Build a Shelter)” will be on view in the Light Fine Arts Gallery through Friday, April 4, with gallery hours from 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Monday through Thursday and 10 a.m.–2 p.m. Friday and Saturday.
When Sashae Mitchell ’13 stepped into her new role as director of the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement (CCE) last year, it was a meaningful return to the place where her journey in civic and global education began. She follows in the footsteps of founding director Alison Geist, who retired after years of visionary leadership.
Before coming back to K, Mitchell was making a difference in her home country of Jamaica as the founder and managing director of Mitchell’s Math Centre, offering math instruction and tutoring to students in grades four through 11. She also served as an assistant lecturer in the faculty of business at Montego Bay Community College.
Mitchell holds a master’s degree in international education and development from the University of Pennsylvania and earned her bachelor’s in mathematics right here at K. We caught up with her to learn more about what inspired her return and her vision for the Center’s future.
Question: How did you get involved in civic engagement as a profession? Tell us about your career path and why you have decided to return to K?
Answer: The CCE was my first introduction to critical community engagement, where students, faculty and community members work together to strengthen communities to promote a more just and equitable society. Through the CCE, I learned the immense value of this work, its role in fostering a sense of belonging, and its ability to help students find and sustain their community while on a college campus. The CCE also provided opportunities for students to learn from and collaborate with community members. This experience significantly shaped my career path. When I entered K, I aspired to become an actuary, but my involvement with the CCE ignited a passion for education and addressing educational inequities which shifted my focus and took me on a different journey.
As the new leader of the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement, Sashae Mitchell ’13 wants to expand its impact while sharing its efforts nationally and even globally.
Upon graduating from K, I interned with the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, where I collaborated on reports and strategic planning sessions to advance the Learning Network of Greater Kalamazoo and conducted data analysis on the Kalamazoo Promise. This experience helped refine my focus on education and community development.
In 2014–15, I returned to K as the post-baccalaureate fellow at the CCE, which deepened my commitment to this work. One of the highlights of that year was when I co-facilitated a class with former CCE director Alison Geist and former associate director Teresa Denton, exploring critical service learning by examining contemporary social issues and their intersections. Working closely with students and facilitating their leadership development as they managed more than 15 community partnerships was incredibly rewarding. This experience also paved the way for my graduate studies in international education and development, where I further honed my skills and gained international experience through an internship with an educational think tank in South Africa. There, I applied many of the principles I learned at K, especially those focused on collaborating with the community to develop educational interventions. Throughout this process, we made sure to center the voices of those impacted by the inequities we were working to address.
Though my career path took many twists and turns, including returning to Jamaica as a lecturer teaching mathematics, the common thread throughout has always been community engagement. I worked with students who struggled with the subject, and I applied the CCE’s principles of community to help encourage collaboration and mutual support in the classroom.
Returning to K has felt like a natural, even destined, step. Although my journey took me down various paths, the central theme has always been how to work in community. Being in this role feels like kismet—serving as the director of the department that helped shape my worldview, career goals and life’s work has been deeply fulfilling. I’m grateful for the opportunity to return to the place where it all began.
Q: What made K special for you as a student and now as a civic engagement professional?
A: Kalamazoo College is truly a unique institution, and surprisingly, I only fully realized this after graduating in 2013. My life has been profoundly shaped by the various aspects of the K-Plan that I had the privilege of experiencing as a student.
My passion for civic engagement began as a first-year student when I joined two programs—Community Advocates for Parents and Students (CAPS) and Keeping the Doors Open (KDO). CAPS captured my heart, and I remained involved in the program throughout my four years at K. Working on the city’s northside at Interfaith Homes through CAPS was the first time I truly felt a sense of belonging at K. It was clear that the CCE would become my home away from home. My involvement in civic engagement grew, and it was no surprise that I became a Civic Engagement Scholar in my sophomore and senior years, eventually returning to work at the CCE as a post-baccalaureate fellow after graduation.
K’s commitment to preparing students to become enlightened leaders through a flexible curriculum, which encourages applying learning in transformative ways, is one of the many reasons the college stands out as a gem in southwest Michigan. Experiential learning is deeply embedded in the culture at K. It has been an absolute pleasure returning to campus. K provides opportunities for students to study abroad, work with community partners and learn from professionals through a variety of internship and externship opportunities. I certainly wouldn’t have gone to China without K’s excellent study abroad program.
The CCE provides an opportunity for me to work with students, faculty and community in collaborative partnerships that employ critical civic engagement and seek to address social justice issues. We facilitate opportunities for students to work alongside community partners, enhancing educational experiences and supporting efforts to create a more just and sustainable world. What a great place to work!
Q: What are your goals, short term and long term, for the Center for Civic Engagement?
A: For more than 20 years, since its inception, the leadership of the CCE has worked to build the department and establish the prominence it now enjoys. As we enter the next chapter of the CCE, our goal is to continue building on this legacy while elevating our work both on campus and within the community. We aim to expand our impact, sharing our efforts nationally and even globally.
Our goals for this next chapter include:
Engaging new and sustaining existing community partners to support our student-led programs, community-based courses and community-building internships.
Collaborating closely with faculty to ensure our work is consistently grounded in scholarship.
Enhancing our data collection methods to more effectively share the stories of our impact.
Fostering the continued growth and development of our Civic Engagement Scholars.
Increasing student participation and engagement across our initiatives.
Through these efforts, we hope to build on the foundation laid by our predecessors and take the CCE to new heights of excellence and influence.
Q: How do you like to connect with students? What’s your approach?
A: I truly enjoy working with students and I would argue that this has been one of the most rewarding aspects of my role. As a Kalamazoo College alum, I take great pride in sharing my K story with students I meet, offering insights into both the successes and challenges I’ve faced and how I navigated them.
Currently, I primarily work with our Civic Engagement Scholars, along with many other students involved in our programs. They have appreciated coming to our offices, and my open-door policy has created a space where they feel comfortable to visit whether to seek advice, share experiences or simply connect.
As a woman of color in this role, I am deeply mindful of how I show up in these spaces, particularly for BIPOC students. Representation matters, and I believe it is vital to support them in meaningful ways. During my time as a K student, I was fortunate to have advocates who ensured my experience was fulfilling and impactful. It’s my mission to pay that forward and be a source of support and guidance for future K students.
Q: On a personal note, what are three things people might be surprised to learn about you?
A: I’m currently learning to swim with the Kalamazoo Master’s Swim Club and it’s been a life-changing experience!
I majored in math at K and I still have a strong passion for the subject. My degree helped me develop critical problem-solving skills that have shaped the way I approach both life and every role I’ve held in my professional career.
I grew up in Montego Bay, Jamaica, and although the Michigan winters are still an adjustment, I absolutely love the winter outfits!
An immersive art exhibition titled Tipping Point—created by a Kalamazoo College faculty member and developed through eight years of projects—has drawn acclaim from viewers as it approaches subjects such as climate change, fossil-fuel extraction, environmental degradation and greenhouse gas emissions.
You’re invited to hear directly from that artist, Jo-Ann and Robert Stewart Professor of Art Professor Tom Rice, in a free lecture at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, February 6. The presentation will take place in room 2008 at Western Michigan University’s Richard Center for Visual Arts.
Rice stated that “tipping point” is a term made popular by journalist and author Malcolm Gladwell in his 2000 book, Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference.
“Gladwell was talking mostly about what he calls social epidemics or trends that suddenly have great success in our culture and how that happens,” Rice said. “Climate scientists, however, use the term to focus on changes to the atmosphere, oceans, carbon sinks, air temperature and ecosystems. In an ideal world, I’d want my work to be a tipping point as Gladwell describes it—one that starts a social epidemic toward real progress in reducing our dependence on fossil fuels. There are other things that need to be done to slow the pace of global warming, but reducing our dependence on fossil fuels is critical.”
“Tipping Point” is currently in the Albertine Monroe Brown Gallery at Western Michigan University’s Richard Center. It features a 95-foot drawing of the mountain-top removal mining process, works addressing the complexities and absurdities of oil refining, and miniature silverpoint drawings portraying accidents related to fracking and crude oil transportation in North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields.
The collection, currently in the Albertine Monroe Brown Gallery at the Richard Center, features a 95-foot drawing of the mountain-top removal mining process, works addressing the complexities and absurdities of oil refining, and miniature silverpoint drawings portraying accidents related to fracking and crude oil transportation in North Dakota’s Bakken oil fields.
Rice says that his use of plastic made from natural gas is intended to raise questions in the viewer’s mind about the ubiquity of petroleum-based products in our culture.
“If people will be led to discuss the contradictions, then I’ve done my job,” he said. “While the effort to transition to renewable, upcycled and sustainable materials is gaining strength—even within industry—the truth is that complete divestment from petroleum-based design is going to require a growing awareness of how deeply petrochemical byproducts are embedded within capitalism. Everything from dyes and adhesives, the plastic in the products we use every day—such as our cell phones and computers—all the way to packaging and the synthetic fibers contained in our clothing and furniture are built on the foundation of petrochemicals.”
As a result, when presenting his work, Rice often questions whether his lecture is an artist’s talk or more of a call to action. To decide for yourself, hear the lecture or visit the exhibition, which is on display through Friday, February 7.
“Avoiding a complete climate disaster is going to mean sacrifice from all of us,” he said. “As author Naomi Klein says in her book This Changes Everything: Capitalism and the Climate, it’s going to take mass social movements to start the change we need in regards to battling global warming and environment degradation. It’s not one behavior or action that humans can take to slow the pace of climate change and environmental degradation. We really can’t predict with certainty when the tipping point will be, or what outcomes will result, but we can be sure that our climate is changing and those changes are not only making the planet warmer, but less inhabitable for humans and many other forms of life.”
Musicians, like all artists, are people obsessed with the details of their art. And like all artists, they require quality tools to create their best work. Vocalists, of course, carry their instrument with them at all times. Instrumentalists often spend years, even decades, learning the idiosyncrasies of their instrument. Pianists, however, don’t have the luxury of bringing their own piano to a lesson, a practice session or a performance.
“If you’re a pianist trying to work on those details, and you have an instrument that cannot respond to the subtleties that pianists work on extensively, then your learning is hampered. Your performance is hampered. Even the audience’s enjoyment of what they’re hearing will be somewhat diminished,” said Andrew Koehler, Kalamazoo College professor of music, music department chair and conductor of the Kalamazoo Philharmonia.
That’s the big picture explanation of why, for more than 20 years, the music department at Kalamazoo College has wanted to restore, enhance and update its piano and keyboard collection in support of every student, faculty and community member who makes and enjoys music on campus. Now, thanks to grant support from several local organizations, that work is almost complete.
The keyboard renewal project funded the restoration of the College’s performance pianos, added new pianos to classroom and studio spaces, and updated the instrument collection in several of the College’s practice rooms.
For more than 20 years, the music department has wanted to restore, enhance and update its piano and keyboard collection in support of every student, faculty and community member who makes and enjoys music on campus. Now, thanks to grant support from several local organizations, that work is almost complete.
Many of the pianos had aged beyond the lack of nuance that would impede a professional pianist, and into a space of no longer being functional instruments.
“Pianos are very complicated technological mechanisms,” Koehler said. “They break down, and they need to be repaired carefully and expertly to remain in good functioning order. It takes a lot of money, and it’s complicated to do.”
In addition to the professional rebuilding of two nine-foot Steinway grand pianos in Stetson Chapel and in Dalton Theatre and significant restoration of a Mason and Hamlin piano in the Light Fine Arts Building Recital Hall, the project has provided a variety of electronic keyboards and tiers of pianos for all levels of musician.
Rebuilding and restoring the three performance pianos is key to the continued use of both Stetson and Dalton for College as well as community events and concerts, said Susan Lawrence, Kalamazoo College music event coordinator, piano teacher and accompanist.
“We do a lot with community here on campus, hosting other music organizations, bringing in community works with some of our ensembles,” Lawrence said. “People use Stetson for weddings and a lot of different things. In Dalton, people rent that out, and we bring artists in that the community comes to hear. There are community members who play with the symphony or with some of our other ensembles. The community benefits from those pianos.”
Among the music department’s ensembles, the Kalamazoo Philharmonia orchestra, the Academy Street Winds band and the Kalamazoo Choral Arts choir intermix K students with a substantial number of community members.
“That’s a town-and-gown kind of relationship,” Koehler said. “Community members are here, they’re using these facilities, the concerts are also thus populated by their acquaintances, their friends. Beyond students and parents, the music department is a place where people come to campus to hear these performances. Any choir concert will feature the piano; a lot of orchestra concerts do. We have guest recitals. Our final exam in music is an opportunity to perform for others. That is the end goal of almost all our performance-based activity. We want to play for others. We want to share what we’re doing. That is a critical part of the ethos of music making, that’s how we’re sharing with the larger community, and those instruments will make a big difference.”
As students develop their musical abilities toward that end goal, offering a range of keyboard and piano options for their use is crucial regardless of their primary instrument or type of musical interest.
“Every musician who walks through this department touches a piano in some way, for theory, composition, music production,” Lawrence said. “Most of them don’t want to be famous pianists, and they may not sit down to hone a craft, but they need a functioning instrument.”
The department worked to create tiers of instruments for the range of student needs.
“The piano is a really important part of how all musicians come to understand music, because the keyboard is a visual representation of the spectrum of notes: the lower pitches ascending to the higher ones, arranged from left to right,” Koehler said. “All musicians are expected to have at least some passing familiarity with how it works. Even if you’re a singer or a violinist who’s trying to make sure you’re in tune and you’re hitting the right pitch, sometimes you have to go to the keyboard, even if it’s one-finger kind of level of piano playing, to say, ‘OK, I think I’ve got those intervals right. I’m doing it correctly.’ All of that absolutely is necessary.”
Electronic keyboards in some of the practice rooms in the Light Fine Arts basement serve as basic or entry-level options. They offer full keyboards—88 weighted keys that mimic the feel of a piano—as well as the ability to connect to a computer for recording, theory, composition and music-production work. In addition, they will weather basement conditions better than an acoustic piano.
High-quality used upright pianos in several practice rooms provide a step up from the electronic keyboards for an intermediate or advanced student, while grand pianos in other rooms allow faculty to work with more serious students. Finally, there are the fine performance pianos in Stetson, the Recital Hall, and Dalton.
“The end result of this project is instruments that support our students’ learning, that allow them to do that kind of nuanced work that I was talking about earlier, and that fundamentally is what we’re here to do: Support the learning of our students and allow them to share it with the community,” Koehler said. “We want to make sure that we provide the materials that they can do that with.”
College pianos endure heavy use, and so it is important both to start with strong pianos and for students to learn how to care for them.
“Students learn to take care of their own instruments,” Lawrence said. “Pianos seem more like furniture to some people in some ways, and they may think it’s going to be there forever, and it’s not if you don’t take care of it. We have covers and locks on all the performance pianos. It’s important that we teach anyone who comes in and uses a piano how to take care of it.”
With that careful maintenance, and aided by recent improvements to climate control in Light Fine Arts, the music department expects the keyboard renewal project to make a difference on campus and in the wider community for years to come.
“Our annual maintenance fund helps us do simple things, like keep the pianos in tune, and maybe some basic action regulation to make sure the hammers are the right shape to hit the string in the right way and create the range of sounds that you want,” Koehler said. “Then sometimes, of course, like we’re seeing here, whole things have to be replaced, or much more significant work has to be done to re-regulate aspects of the complex machine that is the piano. We’re grateful to these organizations for supporting this work, because in the 20 years we’ve been waiting to get this done, these complex machines kept getting worse. It’s just wonderful to turn the corner on this, and we should be in a good place for 10, 20 years or even longer.”
Kalamazoo College will have an additional reason to celebrate life in February alongside Wendy Fleckenstein, K’s administrative secretary to the president and provost. About four years ago, Wendy was seriously ill and awaiting a heart transplant. Now, she will be the featured survivor at an American Heart Association Go Red for Women Gala on Friday, February 28, at the Radisson Plaza Hotel in Kalamazoo.
Locally, the event this year concludes American Heart Month, which raises awareness about heart disease and how to prevent it. It’s a time to encourage people, especially women, to focus on their cardiovascular health with cardiovascular disease being the leading cause of death for both men and women, as well as most racial and ethnic groups, according to the National Center for Health Statistics.
“It’s such a huge honor for me and a way to recognize the donor and his family, because without them, I wouldn’t be here to tell my story,” Wendy said. “I hope I can be an inspiration to anybody to get them to make sure they’re staying on top of their heart health, especially if they have a family history. I think that’s really key.”
Emerita Professor of Physical Education Jeanne Hess introduced Wendy to American Heart Association Development Director Caleb Porter when Wendy’s health stabilized after the transplant.
“Caleb told me what they do, and he said I would be an incredible survivor story for the gala,” Wendy said. “They will play a video interview of me, have a silent auction, a live auction, and an open-your-heart donation request. I’m glad to be participating in it.”
Wendy Fleckenstein, the administrative secretary to the president and provost at Kalamazoo College, rings the heartiversary bell on the anniversary of her heart transplant.
The video will show that in January 2018, Wendy thought she had a cold. The timing was annoying considering it coincided with her first days as a K employee. It lingered for several days, forcing her to visit an urgent care facility.
“They didn’t have an x-ray machine there, so they just said, ‘It looks like you’ve got a sinus infection. Here’s an antibiotic for that,’” Wendy said.
A week later, she still wasn’t well. Wendy could hear a crackling sound coming from her lungs when she tried to sleep, prompting a pneumonia scare and a trip to a second urgent care center.
“They did an x-ray and that doctor didn’t wait for the radiologist to read it,” Wendy said. “She said, ‘Yes, there’s something in your lung. Here’s an antibiotic for pneumonia.’”
A diagnosis more serious, though, was coming. Before she could even get home, in fact, Wendy’s doctor called back with news from the radiologist and said, “You need to get back here. It’s congestive heart failure.”
Wendy was stunned. Heart conditions are common in her family, although she was still three months away from her 48th birthday. To her knowledge, no one that young among her relatives had ever suffered such an ailment.
“They never were able to figure out what caused it, other than perhaps an illness that just settled in the heart and the heart just didn’t recover,” she said. “They did a nuclear stress test. They did a heart catheter and all of that showed nothing. My arteries were pristine and I did fine on the stress test.”
Wendy thought she was in the clear after her doctors installed a defibrillator shortly after the College’s Commencement in 2018. Her condition already was responding well to medications and the procedure strictly was a safeguard in case her heart rate got too slow or she experienced cardiac arrest.
Yet something happened in November 2019, a short time before the pandemic shuttered much of the country.
“We’re pretty certain that I had COVID,” Wendy said. “I was very sick. I was in bed for about a week with no smell, no taste, a high fever and a cough that lingered into February and March.”
Her heart health soon varied significantly, often from day to day, and it was quite noticeable to her family and friends that something was wrong. April 30, 2021, was her last day working at K before her health required her to take a break.
“Louise, one of my best friends here, told me we had to do something,” Wendy said. “She said, ‘You can’t just stay in bed. You’re not getting better,’ so she picked me up and took me to the ER. I had no idea that my body was shutting down. We think now that the COVID took out my heart.”
Wendy was hospitalized for six days in early May, leading her cardiologist to suggest she be moved to another facility to receive a pump called a left ventricle assistive device (LVAD). Yet upon arrival, tests found that Wendy’s heart was bad on the left and right sides, leaving a transplant as the only option.
Her condition became dire, even grave at times. Thankfully, after some improvement helped her get well enough to potentially survive the operation and get stronger afterward, she went on the transplant list and the heart of a 16-year-old boy saved her life. Although Wendy knows her body could still reject the heart at any time, the transplant went well.
“I don’t know anything about him,” she said. “I don’t know where he’s from, just that a donor can be from up to about 1,200 to 1,250 nautical miles away. I really wish that I knew at least his name, his birthday and something that he liked to do. I’ve developed a passion for drawing and painting that I never had before, so I wonder whether he was an artist. I didn’t have curly hair like this before either. I asked my doctor if there was any chance this boy had curly hair. He said he didn’t think there could be anything that connected our DNA, but I would rather think it’s that than the medication.”
Wendy feels better today than she has in a long time and her recovery allows her to think of the donor and his family often.
“In the first days when they had me up and walking around the hospital, the psychiatrist saw me in the hallway and asked me how it felt to know I had somebody else’s heart beating inside me,” Wendy said. “I hadn’t really thought about it until he asked me and I said, ‘guilty.’ I didn’t know why I got to live and someone else had to die. I don’t think I knew until about the two-year mark that a kid saved my life. It hits especially as a parent, knowing that because of him, and because of their decision to donate his heart to me, there are so many things I get to do that they will not experience with him. They’ll never see him graduate high school or college, get married, have children. Their holidays will never be the same. I just decided that this young life saved me and I was going to fight to get back. I do everything I can to live my life and celebrate him.”
There’s no guarantee Wendy will ever meet the donor’s family, although she has opportunities to write to them despite not knowing their names. It ultimately will be up to the family to decide whether they want to meet her, but if she has the chance one day, she will tell them how grateful she is.
“I would tell them how much their gift means, not only to me, but to my family,” Wendy said. “It would’ve destroyed my mom to lose a child, so just to be here is so special. I’m so proud of my kids and what they’re doing in their lives, and to watch them be parents is just the greatest feeling.”
Wendy said that if not for having to fill a big medicine box every month, she wouldn’t know she has a heart problem anymore. Because of that and more, she’s eager to tell her story at the gala.
“I probably don’t work out as much as I should, but I try to keep the donor and his family in my mind every day,” she said. “Being asked to share my story with the American Heart Association is so important with their mission to educate women about heart health and how to get the help that they need. I never realized until the last few years that women are at the highest risk for cardiovascular issues, and the symptoms of a heart attack for women are different than they are for men.
“I had no clue that I was so sick, and when you get the rug pulled out from under you, you realize you might not get a chance to do the things you want to do again. It’s overwhelming and pretty scary, so I’ll just say to live your life to the fullest, love your family and friends, and tell people you love them.”
Kalamazoo College’s faculty and staff are not only dedicated to developing the strengths of every student—preparing them for lifelong learning, career readiness, intercultural understanding, social responsibility and leadership—they are also recognized for their exceptional scholarship and contributions to their fields. Here are their top news stories of 2024 as determined by your clicks. If you missed it, you can find our top 10 stories of students at our website. Watch in the coming days for our top 10 alumni stories and stories from the College itself.
Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Assistant Professor of Chemistry Daniela Arias-Rotondo, affectionately known to her students as Dr. DAR, has earned an American Chemical Society Petroleum Research Fund award. The honor bestows $50,000 to support her students’ research while backing her investigations into petroleum byproducts.
Roger F. and Harriet G. Varney Assistant Professor of Chemistry Daniela Arias-Rotondo, is pictured with her lab students in summer 2024.
The Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo announced that Professor of Theatre Arts Lanny Potts will be the latest with K connections to receive the Community Medal of Arts Award. Since 1985, the annual award has recognized an artist who is a leader in their field, has a significant body of creative activity, has received local and/or national acclaim, and has impacted the Kalamazoo community through art.
The Arts Council of Greater Kalamazoo announced that Professor of Theatre Arts Lanny Potts will receive the 2024 Community Medal of Arts Award.
Jessica Fowle ’00—K’s director of grants, fellowships and research—was selected to be a part of the inaugural Fulbright Program Advisor Mentors Cohort. As an FPA mentor, Fowle is one of 20 from around the country who provides virtual training and information sessions, presentations at the Forum for Education Abroad, and personal advice to new Fulbright program advisors who are looking to structure applicant support and recruitment at their own institutions.
Jessica Fowle ’00 (front row, fourth from right) is grateful for an opportunity to network with her fellow Fulbright Program advisors.
As Professor Timothy Moffit ’80 approached retirement this spring, a group of alumni—both classmates and students of Moffit’s—established a scholarship in his honor. The recognition speaks to Moffit’s commitment to the classroom and his students, to business within the framework of the liberal arts, and to his department and the College as a whole.
Péter Érdi, the longtime Kalamazoo College Luce Professor of Complex Systems Studies, is being honored by five alumni from the Class of 2009 with a fund in his name that will help support a field of study for years to come.
Henry Luce Professor of Complex Systems Péter Erdi presented at the Brain Bar, a technology and music conference in Budapest.
Suzanne Lepley, a former dean of admission, was named Kalamazoo College’s director of alumni engagement in May, succeeding Kim Aldrich ’80, who retired after more than 40 years at the College. In her previous role, Lepley recruited thousands of students to K, making personal connections and demonstrating a passion for student success and engagement.
Endowed chairs are positions funded through the annual earnings from an endowed gift or gifts to the College. The honor reflects the value donors attribute to the excellent teaching and mentorship that occurs at K and how much donors want to see that excellence continue.
Dwight Williams is among six Kalamazoo College faculty members to be named endowed chairs in 2024.
Ivett Lopez Malagamba, Alyssa Maldonado-Estrada, Stephen Oloo, Sandino Vargas-Perez and Leihua Weng—from the Spanish, religion, mathematics, computer science and East Asian studies departments respectively—were awarded tenure in 2024 along with promotion to associate professor.
Ivett Lopez Malagamba was one of five faculty members to earn tenure in 2024.
In addition to serving as head football coach, Zorbo served as K’s interim athletic director during the 2017-18 academic year and as co-interim director in 2023-24. He has served as an assistant athletic director since 2012, overseeing external operations and working closely with the division of advancement to support athletic fundraising efforts.
Kalamazoo College bid farewell this spring to several retiring faculty and staff members who dedicated decades of service to the institution as they are retiring. The College thanked them for their significant contributions, the legacies they leave behind, and the indelible marks they have made on students.
May 10, 2024, was the final Kalamazoo College Jazz Band performance for its director, Music Professor Tom Evans.
Butler is one of nine grantees in the article category, for her article, “Deviance, Penetration, and the Erotic in Aïcha Snoussi’s Drawing Installations,” examining the Tunisian artist’s work. Butler’s research focuses on contemporary Tunisian art, global contemporary art, contemporary global surrealism studies, Southwest Asia and North Africa studies, gender and sexuality studies, and queer theory.
“I am honored to have been selected from amongst many wonderful scholars to receive this prestigious award,” Butler said. “This grant will support 2025 travel to conduct primary research for a new scholarly article on Aïcha Snoussi’s (Tunis and Paris) works. Informed by Heather Love and Audre Lorde, I argue for a new reading of Snoussi’s drawing installations, illuminating intimate relationships between theories of queer of color archives, deviance, and erotics.”
The grant program supports writing about contemporary art, with the goal of maintaining critical writing as a valued way of engaging with the visual arts.
“Artists play a vital role in illuminating key issues of our time, but it is thanks to the attention and insights of arts writers that artists’ visions become widely known and discussed,” said Joel Wachs, president of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. “The Andy Warhol Arts Writers Grant supports and celebrates the crucial contributions of writers who not only transmit but creatively engage with artists’ methods, intentions, contexts, and blind spots to bring their perspectives into focus in the public sphere.”
Assistant Professor of Art History and Women, Gender and Sexuality Anne Marie Butler is a recipient of a 2024 Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant.
In addition to nine article writers, the 2024 Arts Writers Grants include nine books and 12 short-form writing awardees, for a total of $945,000 to 30 writers. Ranging from $15,000 to $50,000 each, the grants support projects targeted at both general and specialized art audiences, from reviews for magazines and newspapers to in-depth scholarly studies.
“The 30 writers receiving support this year are working on projects asking urgent questions about art’s place in the world today,” said Pradeep Dalal, director of The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. “Exploring topics including art’s relationship to fossil fuel extraction, Native art and activism, migration and questions of visibility, internationalist solidarity networks, DIY publishing, and LGBTQ comic artist communities, and covering artists working in Chile, Columbia, Japan, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Taiwan, Tunisia, Turkey, and Venezuela, this year’s grantee projects actively expand our understanding of contemporary art. Many of these projects make unexpected connections between seemingly disparate aspects of art and culture. Despite the severe contraction of available venues for publishing in the arts, these writers continue to enrich and expand the academic disciplinary frameworks of both art criticism and art history.”
Butler’s writing has appeared in publications including ASAP/Journal, Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies, Liminalities: A Journal of Performance Studies, and the London Review of Education. She recently co-edited a new book, Queer Contemporary Art of Southwest Asia North Africa (Intellect Press, 2024).
A nonpartisan and nonprofit initiative is saluting Kalamazoo College today as one of 471 U.S. institutions doing the most in higher education to increase student voter participation.
K is just one of two private institutions in Michigan being recognized as a 2024 ALL IN Most-Engaged Campus for College Student Voting, meaning that the College:
Reported its 2022 student voting data to the National Study of Learning, Voting and Engagement (NSLVE), which is run through the Institute of Democracy and Higher Education (IDHE) at Tufts University.
Shared that data with the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge, an effort that strives to improve and increase democratic engagement activities on college campuses.
Developed and submitted to the ALL IN challenge a 2024 voter-engagement action plan.
Received support from the College’s president through ALL IN’s Higher Education President’s Commitment to Full Student Voter Participation.
K Votes volunteers, including Oakley Gabriel ’21 (center), offered students rides to the polls on Election Day to drive campus voter participation.
K Votes—the Mary Jane Underwood Stryker Center for Civic Engagement’s (CCE) nonpartisan coalition to inform the College’s students, faculty and staff members about voting and civic engagement—is the primary driver of the institution’s efforts in increasing voter participation. K Votes representatives work in partnership with students to register new voters, mail absentee ballots, provide rides to the polls, and distribute candidate information with maps to local polling places.
CCE Program Associate Oakley Gabriel ’21 leads K Votes, along with students, faculty and staff.
“The relationships and momentum built among community organizations and our campus were critical to implementing our robust action plan as supported by a grant from Students Learn Students Vote Coalition,” Gabriel said. “We expanded voter registration initiatives, increased capacity for voter education and elections support, and made connections with hundreds of students. More than 200 K students are newly registered voters thanks to our K Votes Coalition. The Center for Civic Engagement took on a massive undertaking, and the campus and Kalamazoo communities showed up with us, and I’m very proud of what we achieved.”
After a pandemic pause, a favorite Homecoming tradition returned in October, showcasing the creative talents of Kalamazoo College film and media studies students. A film festival featuring the introductory and advanced students in classes led by Visiting Instructor Danny Kim, allowed alumni to peek behind the curtain and see how students hone artistic skills through documentary filmmaking. After the screening, alumni asked questions of the filmmakers to learn more about the projects and applauded the students’ talents.
The projects required students to take B-roll footage to supplement the main footage, conduct about four interviews and use a filming technique called framing that shows the interviewee looking somewhere other than at the camera. Three of the student producers recently shared what they learned from their experiences.
Visiting Instructor Danny Kim (from left), and students Ethan Galler, Davis Henderson, Alex Quesada, Megan McGarry, Emma Frederiksen and Jane Bentley, all from the class of 2025, attend the Homecoming Film Festival.
‘Saturday Night Live’ if it Had No Budget
Davis Henderson ’25 put K’s TV-production class in the spotlight with “ARTX-200,” a film named for the course taught by media producer and studio instructor Jaakan Page-Wood.
“To quote Jaakan, it’s very much like Saturday Night Live if Saturday Night Live was filmed on a Thursday afternoon by amateurs with no money, and was at 4:15,” Henderson said. “It was a great time, and I wanted to give it more attention. It’s definitely helped me find a space at K where I’m able to make stuff.”
“ARTX-200” presents Henderson’s peers as they explain how the course provided a creative outlet they had yet to find elsewhere on campus. Henderson, a theatre major who plans to pursue voice acting, developed an interest in filmmaking as a child when he and his brother began making skit videos with his mom’s photography equipment along with editing tools such as iMovie.
“ARTX-200” by Davis Henderson ’25
“Documentary filmmaking is interesting to me because it’s challenging,” Henderson said. “When something unexpected happens, you can’t restart. There’s no script and you pick it up as it goes. I can open up a history book and get bored. But being able to open a documentary, and see and hear what people are talking about, provides demonstrations that allow your imagination to take over. This is probably the most influential and crucial class I’ve taken here at K. I was able to create something tangible that will go in my portfolio and use it to get a job.”
An Art Form That’s Interesting and Exciting
Jane Bentley ’25 took a much more serious issue of importance to her and created “Students for Justice in Palestine,” a film about the student organization of the same name.
The film opens with Suha Qashou ’24—then president of K’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)—leading a vigil outside the Light Fine Arts building, surrounded by signs and supporters. She discusses her desire to commemorate the lives lost in Gaza in an honorable way.
The subject matter provided Bentley with some challenges.
“Between rallies and meetings, I set up a lot of my shots so a lot of people wouldn’t be identifiable for two reasons,” Bentley said. “First, I wasn’t confident that I was going to get a release form for every single person who might be there. And also, when you’re making something about the pro-Palestinian movement, especially in the immediate aftermath of October 7, you have to consider that leaving someone recognizable could put them in a vulnerable position.”
“Students for Justice in Palestine” by Jane Bentley ’25
Regardless, Kim’s class provided Bentley a chance to be expressive in an inclusive fashion that was supportive of all the student members of SJP.
“If you have something in your life that you think is worth talking about, the best way to get people interested in it is to package it in a form that’s interesting and exciting,” Bentley said. “I think a documentary can be the best way you to do that.”
A Day to Live Graciously
Unlike Bentley or Henderson, Ethan Galler ’25 had the problem of being uncertain when circumstances would allow him to film the bulk of his footage given his subject matter, K’s Day of Gracious Living.
“This is DOGL” captures student voices and some thoughts from Vice President for Student Development Malcolm Smith the day before DOGL 2023. They discussed the importance of the traditional day off toward the end of the spring term as well as the history of it being a secret date selected by student government representatives and revealed in advance only to a few administrators.
Thankfully, Galler scheduled the interviews in advance through some sleuthing and logical conclusions.
“This is DOGL” by Ethan Galler ’25
“It was getting close to the end of the term, and either DOGL was the day it was or there would’ve been conflicts with other student events,” he said. “We picked the day before for interviews and hoped for the best.”
Despite cloudy and cool conditions for DOGL, Galler collected footage of a good number of students having fun at the beach in South Haven and supplemented it with footage from K’s archives of previous DOGL activities.
The end product and his enjoyment of the creative process led him to echo Henderson and Bentley’s praise for their instructor and the advantages of taking the class.
“It’s always good to have a little variety in the classes you take, especially if you’re a K student,” Galler said. “Everybody can be a fan of film in their own way, and making a documentary, you get to see behind the curtain with a production. It’s a fun experience.”
All the student videos from the film festival are available on YouTube. Click the links below to watch the others.
Featured Filmmakers
The other student filmmakers featured in the film festival and their projects included the following. Links are included where available:
Ian Burr ’24: “Football,” spotlighting K football players and what their sport means to them.
Sam Douma ’26: “Via Ferrata,” in which a voracious duo aims to harness their raw musical energy despite being young and distracted.
Emma Frederiksen ’25: “Growing with Disability,” showcasing three K students who describe their experiences navigating adulthood and transitioning into college while living with a disability.
Alek Hultberg ’26: “Tom Evans,” showing students and friends of Music Professor Tom Evans honoring him as he prepares to retire.
Caleb Kipnis ’26: “How to Run Hillel,” presenting insights into the Jewish student organization Hillel and its board members’ roles in planning and executing an event.
Megan McGarry ’25: “Clay and Community,” with ceramics students collaborating to make art pieces in response to a problematic mural.
Alex Quesada ’25: “Train Swag,” featuring cities, states and people that can seem far apart, but with a train, the world becomes smaller and connected communities get bigger.
Amalia Scorsone ’24: “A SuperKut of Us,” with friends discussing the importance of their time at K as they approach graduation.
Luke Torres ’25: “Squishmallows,” in which Jenna Paterob ’23 reveals her obsession with Squishmallows toys.
Tariq Williams ’23: “Sustainability at Kalamazoo College,” showing K’s efforts in sustainability and the impact of recycling on campus.
Anne Marie Butler, assistant professor of art history and women, gender and sexuality at Kalamazoo College, co-edited a new book, Queer Contemporary Art of Southwest Asia North Africa (Intellect Press, 2024), with Sascha Crasnow, assistant professor of art history at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.
Part of the Critical Studies in Architecture of the Middle East series, the book presents new perspectives on queer visual culture in the Southwest Asia North Africa (SWANA) region from artists and scholars. In addition to serving as editors, Butler and Crasnow wrote one of the chapters, “Transing Contemporary Art: Aïcha Snoussi and Khaled Jarrar.”
The book is important because it stands as the first volume to consider this particular intersection of geographical location, visual arts and queer studies, Butler said—hopefully, the first of many.
“Obviously, it’s a resource for people to learn about queer visual culture in the region and at diaspora, but Sascha and I very much don’t want this book to define that field,” Butler said. “We are more interested in the book generating questions, responses and new inquiry than marking off a territory. We hope it is used to build on.”
Each of the book’s three sections—Unfixed Genders, Intersectional Sexualities, and Sites and Spaces—includes at least one of each type of chapter: scholarly essay, interview and artist contribution.
“I think it’s unique to have that many interviews, and having artists’ contributions is a little bit unique to scholarly volumes,” Butler said. “Especially since this is about contemporary art, we wanted to have those artists’ voices represented. The artists’ contributions are one of my favorite parts of this book. It’s fantastic to read artists talking about their own work in this context.’”
With her research focused on contemporary Tunisian art with an emphasis on gender, sexuality and the state, Butler has long cultivated connection with the artists she studies. Working on this volume allowed her to continue that approach while broadening her lens.
“This volume was great for me to be able to think about some of the things I read, and some of the things that my scholarship is in conversation with, in a little bit bigger way,” Butler said. “Continuing to work with the artists and the people that I’ve made connections with has been important to me. I want to continue to build and maintain those relationships. I also want to continue to ask different questions and ask questions in different ways.”
The work of building relationships served Butler well as she and Crasnow prioritized contributions to the book from people living in the SWANA region, representing diaspora and bringing different perspectives and experiences to the collection.
“We have fewer contributors living in the region than we might have liked to, which is a product of some of the tensions that this volume embodies,” Butler said. “This book comes at an unparalleled moment of queer global visibility, and with queer and trans visibility, there’s always this paradox where it’s good that people are more visible, but also it can put people in danger. There’s also, on the larger scale, cultural imperialism, problems with global flows of scholarship, extractive scholarship, misguided ideas about saving LGBTQ people from their cultures, and a homogenization of a global queerness that is the Euro-American perspective of what queerness is. Visibility comes with all of these complications that we need to be really attentive to.”
Anne Marie Butler, assistant professor of art history and women, gender and sexuality at Kalamazoo College, co-edited a new book, “Queer Contemporary Art of Southwest Asia North Africa.”
“Queer Contemporary Art of Southwest Asia North Africa” is available from the publisher at intellectdiscover.com.
Gayatri Gopinath, a preeminent scholar on visual culture and queer studies, wrote a forward to the book that Butler believes helps to contextualize the importance of the book at this moment.
“Anne Marie Butler and Sascha Crasnow’s astute framing of the uses of a trans methodology in the study of contemporary SWANA art is a reflection on the mobility of many of the artists they study,” the forward says. “For Butler and Crasnow, to actively trans SWANA contemporary art is to foreground flux and fluidity, and movement over origin or destination, as well as to jettison rigid identity categories. … The very formations of ‘SWANA,’ ‘queerness,’ and even ‘contemporary art’ are predicated on an acknowledgement of the difference, heterogeneity, and incommensurability of the various social and aesthetic formations that fall within these capacious rubrics. Rather than flattening out difference to create a coherent, homogenous whole, the contributors to this volume attend to the particularities, divergences and incoherences within and between these categories. They suggest that it is perhaps only in the recognition of the radical difference and unknowability of the other that a truly ethical relationality can be forged.”
Although the edited scholarly volume is primarily intended for an academic audience, Butler believes that the artist interviews and contributions make parts of it accessible to anyone who is interested. She hopes people will encourage their libraries to purchase the volume, making it available to a larger audience, since they were unable to secure the funding to publish the book online with open access.
“I think it’s a really special book, and I think that a lot of times when people hear edited volume or academic collection, they think, ‘Oh, that’s not something that I would enjoy reading or looking at.’ But I think that this book has a lot to offer a lot of different people.”
Butler has taught at K since 2019. She holds a Ph.D. in global gender and sexuality studies from the University at Buffalo, an M.A. in arts politics from New York University, and a B.A. in art history and French from Scripps College.
Queer Contemporary Art of Southwest Asia North Africa is available from the publisher at intellectdiscover.com.
