Personal Mention

Marge Myers, associate director of the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, will participate in a conference examining the efficacy and impact of artist residency centers on innovation and creativity at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Conference Center in Italy in early April. The Alliance of Artists Communities (artistcommunities.org) and its international counterpart Res Artis (resartis.org/en/), the world’s two leading organizations representing artist residency centers, will convene the group of 14 leaders from the field of artist residencies, philanthropy, research-and-development laboratories, academia, institutional evaluation agencies, and other cutting-edge thinkers from around the world. The meeting will explore strategic goals that residency programs share in common and also will examine the differences in goals and strategies across residency programs. The end goal is to disseminate best practices to the more than 1,000 residency programs worldwide.

Anne Martindale Williams, artist lecturer in cello, was awarded the National Women of Spirit Award by Carlow University. The Women of Spirit Awards are presented annually to women whose professional and personal leadership and service to others is highly notable. Williams will officially receive the award on April 11.

“Arab Women in Arab News: Old Stereotypes and New Media,” a new book authored by Amal Al-Malki, David Kaufer, Suguru Ishizaki and Kira Dreher, has been published by Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing. The book addresses how western stereotypes affect how Arab women are portrayed in the western news media. Al-Malki is an assistant teaching professor of English and Dreher is a visiting instructor of English at Carnegie Mellon Qatar. Kaufer is a professor of English and Ishizaki an associate professor of English on the Pittsburgh campus.

Jendayi Frazer, distinguished service professor in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the Heinz College, spoke to CrossTalk TV about the Kony 2012 debate. Frazer was the leading architect of U.S.-Africa policy over the last decade. Watch the interview at http://youtu.be/W7jf-JdbpFI.