News Brief: James Duesing Appointed Director of Carnegie Mellon's Center for the Arts in Society

Contact: Shilo Rea / 412-268-6094 / shilo@cmu.edu

PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University has appointed James Duesing director of its Center for the Arts in Society (CAS), a research center in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the College of Fine Arts that investigates the role of arts in societies. Duesing, professor of art in the School of Art, succeeds Paul Eiss, who will remain at CMU as an associate professor of history.

Duesing has been on the CMU faculty since 1997. He is an award-winning animator who has worked in many forms, from traditional hand-drawn and early digital work to 3-D and motion capture. His work has been exhibited and broadcast worldwide, and he has received numerous prestigious grants and awards.

Duesing has been a vital member of CAS from its earliest days and was co-organizer — along with Kathy Newman of the Department of English — of the CAS Media Initiative from 2011 to 2014. The Media Initiative reflected on media studies as a field and considered new artistic and theoretical issues that have emerged in response to the rise of new and digitally networked media.

"CAS is at an exciting place," Duesing said. "The initiative format has been effective at challenging faculty to think in long-term interdisciplinary ways about their work and research. I especially value the ground up approach the center takes in developing the multifaceted aspects of faculty research to work in the university and with external communities. I look forward to the innovations the new Performance Initiative will reveal and hope everyone in the university will join in and be part of the thought-provoking events and dialogue."

Dan Martin, dean of the College of Fine Arts, and Richard Scheines, dean of the Dietrich College, said jointly, "We are excited to see how James, with his considerable expertise and experience, will build on the achievements of Paul's directorship and lead CAS in its unique interdisciplinary approach to research and education."

For more information on CAS, visit http://www.cmu.edu/cas/.

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James Duesing (pictured above) is an award-winning animator who has worked in many forms, from traditional hand-drawn and early digital work to 3-D and motion capture. His work has been exhibited and broadcast worldwide, and he has received numerous prestigious grants and awards.