Arts & Humanities

Florida State saxophone quartet makes history

A quartet of student saxophonists from The Florida State University College of Music has won the grand prize at the 2009 Coleman International Chamber Ensemble Competition. The annual contest is one of the world’s most rigorous and respected for ensembles of young, non-professional performers from the nation’s top music schools. Collectively known as the Mana […]

Choreographer Zollar wins Guggenheim

A 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship has been awarded to internationally renowned choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, the founder and artistic director of the Brooklyn-based, all-female dance troupe Urban Bush Women, and the distinguished Nancy Smith Fichter Professor of Dance at The Florida State University. Guggenheim fellowships are bestowed annually on a select cadre of mid-career professionals […]

World’s top teaching award in Medieval Studies goes to Florida State professor

Professor Richard K. Emmerson, the chairman of the Department of Art History at The Florida State University and an internationally renowned scholar on the Middle Ages, has garnered the 2009 Excellence in Teaching Medieval Studies award from the Medieval Academy of America. Worldwide, only one recipient of the distinguished honor is named each year by […]

Florida State professors win top honor for book on American music

The Irving Lowens Memorial Book Award is the most distinguished honor bestowed by the Society for American Music, and this year it goes to a scholarly tour de force coauthored by noted musicologists Denise Von Glahn and Michael Broyles of The Florida State University College of Music. “In the field of American music, it doesn’t […]

Florida State professor is National Art Museum Educator of the Year

The National Art Education Association (NAEA) has bestowed the distinguished title of National Art Museum Educator of the Year on Associate Professor Pat Villeneuve of The Florida State University. The prize will be formally presented in Minneapolis next month at the association’s annual conference. While Florida State art educators and studio art instructors are no […]

Brokaw honors World War II veterans with endowed fund

The Institute on World War II and the Human Experience at The Florida State University is serious about the importance of its vast collection of World War II materials. Yet, there was no shortage of smiles at a March 12 ceremony when NBC News special correspondent and author Tom Brokaw honored World War II veterans […]

Maritime archaeologist at helm of modern journey to ancient Egyptian land

Ancient Egyptians may be best known for building pyramids, but internationally renowned maritime archaeologist Cheryl Ward wants the world to know that they were pretty good sailors, too. She ought to know. Ward, an associate professor of anthropology at The Florida State University, and an international team of archaeologists, shipwrights and sailors recently built a […]

Florida Book Awards go to poets Kirby and Giampietro of Florida State

The third annual Florida Book Awards were announced March 3 and among the winning authors selected from across the Sunshine State are a pair of poets from The Florida State University. Professor David Kirby has won the gold medal in Poetry for the second consecutive year, and graduate student Frank Giampietro has earned a bronze. […]

Work by Florida State writers picked for top literary anthologies

The literary world has bestowed yet another round of distinguished honors on writers in The Florida State University Department of English and its top-ranked Creative Writing Program. A poem by writer-in-residence Barbara Hamby and a short story by doctoral student Holly Wilson have each garnered a hard-to-get slot in a renowned anthology. Hamby’s poem, “Ode […]

Florida State research: survival diet tied to human ancestor’s face changes

The facial structure of an ancient relative of modern humans may have evolved to allow them to eat large, hard nuts and seeds as part of a survival strategy, according to a new study by an international team of researchers that includes Florida State University’s Dennis E. Slice. The findings, published in the journal Proceedings […]

Florida State professor publishes ‘Folktales of the Amazon’

As a boy living on a small farm with his grandparents in the Amazon region of Colombia, Juan Carlos Galeano was entranced with the lush, naturalistic and often violent folktales that had been passed down from tribal Amazonians and had evolved through generations of natives and multiethnic newcomers like his relatives. Over the past decade, […]

Top Florida State choreographer Zollar awarded $50,000 Wynn fellowship

Internationally known choreographer Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, an esteemed dance professor at The Florida State University and the founder and artistic director of the Brooklyn-based troupe Urban Bush Women, has been named a 2008 USA Wynn Fellow in dance by the philanthropic nonprofit organization United States Artists (USA). The prestigious honor carries with it a […]