achieving carbon neutrality; Oberlin launches a BA+BFA dual degree and is a No. 1 Fulbright producer; and more.
An Allen art exhibition brings the campus together; vegan Ethiopian food; faculty research; plus book reviews.
A peek into the expansive world of Tony-winning costume designer Montana Levi Blanco ’07.
Podcasting has never been more popular—and Oberlin alums have been instrumental to the medium’s rise.
A concert performance of the Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Omar brings together multiple generations of alums.
Montana Levi Blanco ’ 07
Photo by Samantha Jane
SPRING SCENES
There’s nothing like Oberlin’s campus after a long, snowy winter.
PHOTO BY MIKE CRUPI
Two Things To Keep in Mind
THIS IS A CHALLENGING TIME for our nation and our campus. Many of us closely follow the news each day, concerned about the impact of legislative developments and executive orders on Oberlin.
In recent months, I have made it a priority to meet in small groups with students, faculty, and staff, just as I have in years past when we collectively felt the weight of complex circumstances. These conversations—dozens of them and counting—are the most effective way I know to deepen my understanding of how our people are feeling. One of the many reasons I am so proud of Oberlin is the culture of care we nurture here, and these interactions, for me, are an essential part of this.
As I start these conversations, I find myself returning to the very mission of this institution, which reads in part:
Oberlin is committed to educational access and opportunity. It seeks to offer a diverse and inclusive residential learning environment encouraging a free and respectful exchange of ideas and shares an enduring commitment to a sustainable and just society.
Our mission is an affirmation—and something that’s more relevant and vital than ever. It is my obligation to protect both Oberlin and its mission as we navigate these challenges together.
At the conclusion of each conversation, there are two things I hope to have conveyed. The first: If you believe that the arc of justice bends toward the good, then you must also believe that we will move through this difficult time in ways that ultimately align with the values Oberlin holds dear.
The second, as our mission reminds us, is this: Never lose your faith that one person can change the world. Obies everywhere demonstrate that this is still possible.
The days ahead may be difficult, but they do not change who we are or how we care for one another. Those who know me well understand that I am, above all, an optimist—a realist, but an optimist. And I am confident that we will emerge from this period with our mission—and our community—intact.
carmen twillie ambar President, Oberlin College and Conservatory
Vol. 120 No. 1
Editor Annie Zaleski
Art Director
Nicole Slatinsky
Magazine Designer Lesley Busby
Director of Content and Social Media Strategy
Mathias Reed
Photo Coordinator and Project Manager
Yvonne Gay
Executive Director, Office of Communications
Kelly Viancourt
Vice President for Communications
Josh Jensen
The Oberlin Alumni Magazine (ISSN 0029-7518), founded in 1904, is published by Oberlin’s Office of Communications and distributed to alumni, parents, and friends of Oberlin College and Conservatory.
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POSTMASTER
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A (MUSIC) ROOM OF ONE’S OWN
In response to Nick Royal ’59’s query wondering if “other older graduates remember the music room” [Obereactions, Fall 2024]—yes, indeed! It was the place where I first heard Gabrieli’s music for brass instruments (I love it still!) and other pre-18th-century music, since contemporary concerts and recordings focused only on performing music of the later centuries. Thankfully, our own Oberlin College Choir performed early music as well. (If only the conservatory had supported early music instrumental performance then as I hear they do now.) Another charm of that small room in the library was that no one else was there; I could study while listening to music I could not hear elsewhere. I also loved studying in the art museum, where I could be surrounded by beauty while I read.
AnnAdèle Lloyd ’57 Asheville, N.C.
Just a few years after Nick Royal ’59 discovered the old library’s music room,
so did I. A would-be history major, I went first to the history room for hours of quiet study. Later I made myself at home in the government and English rooms, each one quite inviting and conducive to uninterrupted study. Eventually I ventured into the music room, having realized it was not reserved for conservatory students. Today I cannot say which recordings I chose to play, except I remember quite clearly finding a set of 33-1/3 records (six, eight, maybe 12 records in all) of the Spanish classical guitarist Andrés Segovia as recorded over several decades. I was so enthralled by the music, by Segovia’s playing, and by the realization that the guitar could be a classical music instrument (amazing!) that I seldom returned to the other rooms. Every once in a while I listen to a Segovia recording today, enthralled again and again [and] most appreciative of all the new experiences Oberlin opened for me.
Marshall E. Linden ’62 Waterbury, Conn.
ENGLAND’S DREAMING
It was wonderful to read “London Calling” [Fall 2024], Tracy Chevalier ’84’s article about Oberlin’s London study abroad program, in which I participated during the fall 1976 semester of my senior year. My experience was similar to Tracy’s in terms of the program’s structure, inclusion of twice-weekly theater experiences, and fostering of lifetime friendships. In fact, I married one of the other participants, Roger Albin ’77, following graduation the next semester; although we had been friends since our freshman year, it’s likely that the closeness of this group and the timing of our experience at the end of our Oberlin years may have led to this excellent decision. The article reminded me of my good fortune to interact and learn from our small but close group, whose different areas of study might not have led to on-campus opportunities.
Thank you for sharing Tracy’s observations and memories, which prompted very happy recollections and follow-up discussions with others, including the three exceptional Oberlin women whom I was lucky to have as flatmates.
Nili Tannenbaum ’76
Ann Arbor, Mich.
A BRILLIANT MIND
We were saddened to learn of the passing of Marcia Colish [Losses, Fall 2024]. We both were privileged to study with her, and we often recall her brilliant lectures, generous support, and wry sense of humor. It was a pleasure to stay in touch with her periodically during her many years of non-retirement. Last spring in Freiburg, Germany, we spotted a university building named for Albert the Great (“Albertus Magnus”), one of the medieval philosophers Miss Colish so loved to explore. We wrote to her that day; she replied within hours with a comment on Albert’s view of Aristotle and telling us just where to find his tomb if we were going anywhere near the Cologne Cathedral. Within a month, she had passed, her star undimmed to the end.
Bill ’76 and Marcia ’79 Weinert Rochester, N.Y.
CORRECTIONS
In the Fall 2024 issue, the photo credit on Page 10 should be Maria Perme, while the photo caption on Page 32 should read 1824, not 1924. And in Losses, Dr. Harrison Leslie Adams Jr. was the class of 1955, not 1978. We apologize for the errors.
Send letters to the editor, story tips, and pitches to alum.mag@oberlin.edu. If you are submitting a letter to the editor, please specify that your note is for publication and also include your class year and how your name should appear in print.
Around Tappan Square
WINTER TERM Students had an exceptionally busy (and productive!) 2025 Winter Term. On campus, some trained guiding eye dogs, took an Emergency Medical Services (EMT) course, and presented the Winter Term Opera The Infinite Energy of Ada Lovelace. Off campus, students conducted research, while conservatory students pursued and practiced work related to their studies at Hidden Valley and the Oberlin Sonny Rollins Jazz Ensemble performed at Dizzy’s Club at Jazz at Lincoln Center.
HIGHEST HONOR
Oberlin Names New Board of Trustees Chair
Charles S. “Chuck” Birenbaum ’79 has been named chair of the Oberlin Board of Trustees. Birenbaum brings to this leadership role decades of legal experience and a profound understanding of Oberlin’s mission, which has been shaped by his years as a student, parent, trustee, and longtime advocate for students.
“I am excited to welcome Chuck Birenbaum to his new role with the board, and I look forward to the good work we will do together,” says Carmen
Twillie Ambar, Oberlin President.
“Chuck has provided steady leadership to Oberlin over many years, and some of our institution’s most significant accomplishments have benefited from his expertise, determination, generosity, and irrepressible love of Oberlin.”
Birenbaum’s legal career spans more than four decades, with extensive experience in a wide range of litigation. He is an attorney specializing in labor and employment relations at Greenberg Traurig LLP in San Francisco, where he chairs the Northern California offices.
For years, Birenbaum has given back to the community through his work with and service on the board of the Justice & Diversity Center, a leader in providing access to volunteer legal services across California.
Since joining Oberlin’s board in 2014,
Birenbaum has emerged as a driving force for fostering innovation and student success. He cofounded the entrepreneurial accelerator LaunchU, which initiated a comprehensive effort to integrate business education across all disciplines. The program has since evolved into the Innovation Studio, which ensures that every Oberlin student can graduate with practical business acumen and entrepreneurial thinking skills. Through the support of Oberlin’s Ashby Business Scholars program, Birenbaum has opened his law firm to provide a training ground for students, facilitating direct exposure to professional environments and meaningful mentorship opportunities.
On campus, the William and Helen Birenbaum Innovation and Performance Space, dedicated in 2017 and named in honor of Birenbaum’s parents, has become a vibrant hub for cultural and intellectual exchange, hosting conservatory concerts, panel discussions, entrepreneurial workshops, and community gatherings. Located on the lower level of the Hotel at Oberlin, this versatile venue is essential to Oberlin’s new music theater program, which launches in fall 2025 in adjacent space.
“As an institution, we recognize that this is an especially critical time to fulfill our mission to educate students to be leaders who can create change and value in the world,” says Birenbaum. “Nothing could be more important than serving upcoming generations, and Oberlin remains well-positioned to generate leaders who are prepared to address complex challenges in society.”
Birenbaum earned a degree in government with honors at Oberlin and a law degree from Georgetown University Law Center. He assumes his board chair role July 1, succeeding Chris Canavan ’84, CEO at the Global Carbon Market Utility, who has served on Oberlin’s board since 2012 and as chair since 2017. For more information on Birenbaum’s career and impact on Oberlin, read: go.oberlin. edu/birenbaum-named-chair
Oberlin Reaches Goal of Carbon Neutrality
An achievement more than two decades in the making, Oberlin can now officially boast that it is a carbon-neutral campus— and right on target.
This ambitious goal took shape with a 2004 pledge of environmental stewardship by our Board of Trustees. Two years later, Oberlin participated as an initial signatory on a university climate commitment that grew to include a network of some 900 U.S. institutions.
The college became a carbon-neutral campus in 2025 thanks in large part to our newly installed geothermal heating and cooling system. The four-year project, dubbed the Sustainable
Infrastructure Program (SIP), converted Oberlin’s fossil fuel-based system into an eco-friendly one, reducing greenhouse gas emissions related to campus energy by approximately 90 percent and relying on carbon offsets for the remaining 10 percent.
“Oberlin has been proactive about
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meeting the challenge of carbon neutrality,” says Oberlin President Carmen Twillie Ambar. “We’re not avoiding our responsibility to future generations. We are acting now to address our aging energy system and thereby creating a more sustainable campus—and planet.”
The SIP involved replacing centuryold infrastructure with a stable system powered by 850 geothermal wells on the practice fields north of campus; watersource heat pumps; and an underground network of pipes. Oberlin retrofitted nearly 60 campus buildings to accommodate the new system and equipped 11 more buildings with air conditioning.
Oberlin will spend the next year testing the geothermal system to measure its efficiency. At the end of this process, the college will share this data with Second Nature, a nonprofit dedicated to accelerating action on climate change through higher education, to verify that Oberlin’s carbon footprint is zero.
“Oberlin’s approach is unique because we committed to reducing the college's carbon footprint at the source—by using infrastructure improvements—instead of depending solely on carbon offsets,” says Chris Norman, senior director of energy and sustainability. “It’s real climate action. It’s meaningful. We’re actually doing the work.”
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GOING GREEN
LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION!
Oberlin Screenwriters Intensive Has Successful Third Year
During a frosty weekend in mid-January, eight talented alums came back to campus to participate in the Oberlin Screenwriters Intensive (OSI). Across several days, this cohort had the opportunity to workshop original scripts with working and established writers in Hollywood. This year, mentors included Michele and Kieran Mulroney P ’21, Julian Breece, Aïda Mashaka Croal, Micah Schraft, and Allison Schroeder.
Now in its third year, the program was founded by the Mulroneys—who also have extensive writing, producing, and directing credits—and Oberlin faculty and staff Laura Baudot, senior associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and an associate professor of English; Geoff Pingree, English and cinema and media professor; and Josh Sperling, assistant professor of cinema and media.
As of the 2025 edition, the intensive is sponsored by Columbia Pictures. With this partnership, the studio has first look and last refusal of the scripts written by OSI participants. “Obies who are seeking to make it as screenwriters will now have a chance to have a major studio look at their work,” Baudot says. “This incredible opportunity—and the generosity and dedication of OSI founding directors and mentors—speaks to the industry’s appreciation of the talent and fresh perspectives our students and alumni bring.” For more, read: go.oberlin.edu/screenwriters WE’RE NO.
Oberlin a Top Producer of Fulbright Students for 2024-25
Nineteen Oberlin College and Conservatory students and alumni were awarded Fulbright fellowships for the 2024-25 academic year, making the college the No. 1 producer of honorees among U.S. undergraduate-only institutions. These awardees encompass the popular English Teaching Assistant (ETA) program and Fulbrights geared toward study and research, including in the creative arts.
These 19 fellows also represent the most honorees Oberlin has ever produced in a single academic year. Thirteen students are serving as ETAs, and six are pursuing graduate study and research projects abroad, living in countries such as Germany, Colombia, Taiwan, Kazakhstan, Greenland, and Paraguay. The college also had 39 semifinalists, including 14 in the study and research category.
This marks the 16th consecutive year Oberlin was recognized as a Top Producer of Fulbright students.
The Oberlin Screenwriters Intensive was full of creative focus (below); Faythe Cooper ’24 (right) earned a Fulbright English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) to Taiwan.
Combined BA+BFA Program in Integrated Arts Launches
Beginning this fall, Oberlin students will be able to pursue a combined dual degree that culminates in a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Integrated Arts. Unlike traditional BFA programs, which require selecting a single area of study, Oberlin’s BFA in Integrated Arts, which can be completed in five years, lets students shape their own path by incorporating other disciplines into their individual artistic practice.
In this way, painting could be paired with politics, theater with environmental studies, creative writing with neuroscience—or any number of other combinations. “This program is built on the idea that artists thrive when they have a broad intellectual foundation,” says program director Julia Christensen, Eva & John Young-Hunter Professor of
Integrated Media. “It’s about bridging the gap between creativity and academic exploration.”
Students in the program will complete courses in their chosen BA major and take 10 courses in the practicing arts, which may include cinema and media, creative writing, dance, musical studies, studio art, and theater. In their fifth year, students will live and work in Cleveland. This immersive arts year is dedicated to completing a substantial, public-facing project—a performance, exhibition, or installation—determined in collaboration with their Oberlin faculty mentors.
“Artists don’t usually see themselves as just a painter or just a sculptor,” Christensen says. “They draw from all kinds of disciplines and backgrounds. That’s the kind of artistry we want to foster here: Our students don’t just learn to be artists; they learn to be thinkers who engage deeply with the world around them, using their creative problem-solving skills to address complex, real-world challenges.” For more on this program, visit: go.oberlin. edu/ba-bfa
Learning & Labor
The Body, The Host
BY ALICIA SMITH-TRAN ’10
An award-winning art exhibition challenges the prevailing narrative of the 1980s HIV/AIDS epidemic.
In 2022, Sam Adams, the Ellen Johnson ’33 Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, started planning an Allen Memorial Art Museum exhibition centered on the 1980s HIV/AIDS epidemic—more specifically, one that challenged the prevailing narrative that the epidemic was only detrimental to gay white men. Right away, Adams knew Keith Haring was going to be included.
To art history major Cecil Pulley ’24, this was great news. A Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, Pulley was a longtime admirer of the groundbreaking
1980s New York City-based pop artist. In fact, he conducted extensive research on Haring while at Oberlin, culminating in a project titled “Intersections of Queerness and Christianity in the Art, Life and Legacy of Keith Haring.”
During a formative meeting at Blue Rooster Bakehouse, Pulley and Adams “chatted about Haring and art and our mutual interests in this subject for a long time,” Pulley says. His Haring expertise ended up helping inform the final exhibition, The Body, the Host: HIV/AIDS and Christianity, which was open January 20 through December 15, 2024. So did many other voices: As Adams conceptualized the exhibition, they initiated discussions about potential artwork with Oberlin students and faculty and AIDS activists and faith leaders from Cleveland.
Patterns and themes soon emerged. “It became apparent that there’s a huge overlap in these two topics [HIV/AIDS
and Christianity],” Adams says. “Queer Christian artists, many of whom were altar boys, were raised in Christian backgrounds. And then amid the outbreak of HIV in the 1980s, they were impacted by that and drew on their upbringings in the church and these altarpiece formats for processing some of that loss.”
On one side of the exhibition, Adams arranged more than a dozen selections focused on religious themes. Pieces included the 1983 Andy Warhol screen print Ingrid Bergman (The Nun); Cleveland native Jerome Caja’s 1993 painting Carrot Pietà, which was created out of acrylic ink, nail polish, eyeliner, and human ashes; and The Smallest Giant Makes an Easy Target, a 2023 charcoal drawing by Assistant Professor of Studio Art and Africana Studies Michael Boyd Roman that uses the story of St. Sebastian to depict present-day racist policing. In an adjacent section, artworks
ART IN ACTION
visualized aspects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Pieces here included Andres Serrano’s 1989 print Ejaculate in Trajectory and multiple pieces by Haring. At the end of the gallery hall, Brendan Fernandes’ nearly floor-to-ceiling In PrEP we Trust?—part of a project of the Toronto-based organization AIDS Action Now!—featured prominently.
Adams’ curation exemplified how these pieces are intertwined. “There’s many overlapping motifs that you’ll see around the effects of AIDS and of queerness—this kind of guilt and shame, plague, punishment, martyrdom, and then also salvation, resurrection, and redemption,” they say. “The exhibition is a bit like a Venn diagram.”
Reflecting on the impact of the exhibition, Adams says the interdisciplinary, cross-campus connections were particularly gratifying; in fact, some professors teaching biology, global health, and immunology classes started the semester at the museum. “It was their first meeting, and [students] were looking at the artwork,” they say. “That feels very, very Oberlin to me. Biology students are learning the history [of health crises] through the visual.”
Assistant Professor of Biology Gaybe Moore ’15 required students in their immunology and pathogenesis course to evaluate the written descriptions
accompanying pieces in an effort to teach how to “critically assess writings about science.”
Many students chose the 2001 painting Index Study (red), by the late artist-activist Frank Moore—a work Adams included at the suggestion of Pulley. The piece features “a furry paw, insect, and frog legs, and human fingers with painted nails emerging from DNA strands,” its placard reads, alongside a brief description of HIV’s genetic sequencing.
“Some of the language [on the placard] is interesting because you have to convey the information to a general audience,” Gaybe Moore says. “But you also have to give enough science so they understand what’s going on.”
Diverting students’ gaze from the microscope to the museum prompted students to consider the potential for art to influence the general public’s perception of HIV and AIDS from both a social and scientific standpoint and to reflect on how art, science, and activism can work in concert.
Freya Kailing ’25 noted that dissecting the placards made her “think a lot about the number of pieces that were about the stigma of HIV and AIDS.” Providing people with scientific facts is “really important for reducing that stigma and having a social impact,” she adds.
Pike, a 2008 graduate who’s now an assistant professor of biology at Oberlin, encouraged similar lines of thinking in
his infectious diseases course. When visiting the gallery, he asked his students, “Does art need to be scientifically accurate to be useful? Does it have to be visually appealing? Or is something being kind of shocking useful?”
The diverse identities represented in the exhibition led to meaningful conversations about creatives grappling with complex challenges. Ana Perry, assistant professor of modern and contemporary art history, brought students to the museum for several of her courses, including Approaches to Arts of the Americas and The Arts of Latin America in the 20th and 21st Centuries. “It’s been great to show students the importance of Latin American and Latinx art in the collection and show how a lot of [these artists] are queer,” she says, “and also how Latin American and Latinx artists interrogate religion when Catholicism is prominent in the culture.”
The Body, the Host won Best in Visual Arts at the 2024 POZ Awards, which honor representations of HIV and AIDS in media and culture. In November 2024, the Allen hosted a symposium of artists, historians, and activists such as Peter Staley ’83 for discussions and speeches on the exhibition’s themes.
In addition, student dancers, actors, and musicians performed in the gallery. “Performance in general is kind of new for us [as curators],” says Adams. “It was so important to me that the work is not static and in the past and that we bring liveness and action and movement into the galleries.”
The Body, the Host also became an unforgettable finale to Pulley’s time as an undergraduate at Oberlin: He authored two placards in the exhibition.
“What a cool thing,” Pulley says, “for my parents to come to commencement and walk through the museum and see my name on the wall.”
Alicia Smith-Tran ’10 is a writer and associate professor of sociology and comparative American studies.
A November 2024 symposium brought together students and the community for dancing, discussion, and contemplation.
Learning & Labor
“COVID proved the wisdom of our thinking that the more things you have going on, the better,” says Wassé, who’s also an elementary school teacher, piano instructor, and concert pianist.
True Connections
BY HANNA RASKIN ’98
Daniel Wassé ’87’s vegan Ethiopian food stand Korarima is the real deal. Ethiopian cardamom is also known as false cardamom, but there’s nothing bogus about it.
The subtly smoky spice, derived from a ginger plant that flourishes in East Africa, is the driving force of Ethiopian cooking. In fact, its tangy flavor and faint astringency are so crucial to the cuisine that Daniel Wassé ’87 and his wife, Helen, held off on launching their vegan food stand in Baltimore until they were sure they could source the real deal from their native country.
“Without fresh false cardamom, Ethiopian food is just a pale reflection of what it should be,” Wassé says. “You can forget it.”
Once the Wassés arranged for trusted contacts to ship them unadulterated spices, they felt ready to hawk chickpea stews and sautéed greens at farmers markets. For their business, which debuted in 2019, they chose the name Korarima, the Amharic word for false cardamom.
Korarima is one of several entrepreneurial projects the Wassés have underway. “COVID proved the wisdom of our thinking that the more things you have going on, the better,” says Wassé, who’s also an elementary school teacher, piano instructor, and
concert pianist. “I have very little free time, let’s put it that way.”
Wassé inherited his interest in piano from his mother, who grew up in a lowincome Cleveland neighborhood. “If my mother had the capital, including social capital, she would have loved to go far
with piano,” he says. “She still plays organ in church.”
Instead, she found work as a nurse, which took her to Ethiopia. While there, she met and married Wassé’s father, Alula Wassé, who served as longtime Ethiopian Emperor Haile
RECIPE
Selassie’s librarian. As the nation’s political situation grew increasingly volatile, Wassé’s father sought to protect his young family by requesting a scholarship to an American university. After the 1974 coup d’état, Wassé says, “there was no going back.”
Although Wassé grew up in Seattle, he describes his childhood as shaped by an “Ethiopian aesthetic.” Between 1971 and the early 1980s, Washington’s Ethiopian immigrant population increased tenfold to about 200 people, with the community organizing a refugee association in 1983. As a teenager, Wassé washed dishes at Kokeb, Seattle’s first Ethiopian restaurant.
“When it comes to diversity, I had not much of a clue,” Wassé says. “At Oberlin, I saw that and appreciated that.”
His term as a bread baker at Keep Co-op also made Wassé a cooking enthusiast who can prepare whatever he feels like eating. “Carrot soufflé, anything,” he says by way of example. “I’ve nailed down Thanksgiving when it comes to turkey. Yesterday, I made a killer Ukrainian borscht.”
“Without fresh false cardamom, Ethiopian food is just a pale reflection of what it should be. You can forget it.”
After graduating from the conservatory with a piano performance degree, Wassé taught piano lessons before returning to Seattle to run the Ethiopian Community Center. For five years, his life was an exhausting swirl of deportation fights and equal funding demands on behalf of the city’s 25,000 Ethiopian-born residents. He eventually
stepped away from professional advocacy but wanted to find a way to continue engaging with Ethiopian culture.
If the Wassés hadn’t relocated to Silver Spring, Maryland, seven years ago, they never would have contemplated selling Ethiopian food. Offering shiro and misir in the domestic capital of Ethiopian restaurants would be akin to delivering “snowballs to the North Pole,” Wassé says. But there was demand for more Ethiopian food near their new home in Baltimore, and Helen Wassé was primed to meet it.
“She learned to make berbere the traditional way, laying peppers in the backyard,” Wassé says. Her pungent spice mix seasons the sauces and stews they ladle from silver tureens at the 32nd Street Farmers Market on Saturday mornings and outside Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall before Baltimore Symphony Orchestra concerts.
History has left its imprint on Ethiopian cuisine. For financial reasons, Korarima is a vegan operation, so it doesn’t serve kifto, made from minced raw beef. Yet Wassé likes to cite kifto’s reputed origin story, which involves 16th-century Ethiopian troops preparing meals without fire, since light would reveal their position to enemy soldiers.
For Wassé, the whole Ethiopian experience—including centuries of conflict, conquests, and environmental crises—is bound up in Ethiopian food. While the country has undergone almost constant change since Wassé’s family left, its iconic dishes have remained essentially the same. That’s why food isn’t merely a source of extra income for Wassé; it’s “the way I connect to the culture I identify with.”
Hanna Raskin ’98 is editor and publisher of The Food Section, an award-winning newsletter covering food and drink across the American South (thefoodsection.com).
Misir wat
(lentil stew)
Ingredients
1 cup red lentils
4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 medium red onion, finely diced
2 garlic cloves, puréed
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, puréed
1 to 2 tablespoons berbere spice, depending on heat preference
2 cups water
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)
1/4 cup white vinegar
2 cups water
Directions
Bring a large pot of water to a rolling boil over high heat. While water is reaching a boil, rinse the lentils.
Add lentils to boiling water and turn down heat. Simmer for 8 to 12 minutes or until lentils are soft. Set lentils aside.
In a nonstick skillet over medium heat, warm the oil. Sauté onions until translucent, about 5 to 8 minutes.
Add garlic and ginger to the onions; cook for 2 minutes. Stir in berbere to form a paste.
Add water and reserved lentils to skillet.
Cover and cook for 15 to 20 minutes or until most of the water has evaporated. Salt to taste.
Note: OAM publishes recipes as provided but doesn’t test them independently.
Learning & Labor
RESEARCH REVIEW
A Galaxy of Options
BY DYANI SABIN ’14
Jillian Scudder is making sure astronomers can trust old data before leaping into new research.
When astronomers assess the ages of galaxies, they look at the glow of the elements created by nuclear fusion. “Our hydrogen gas comes prebaked with the universe,” says Associate Professor of Physics Jillian Scudder. “Anything else has gone through a star, because the only way you get these heavier elements is if a star built them.”
Astronomers can measure how much non-hydrogen glowing gas a galaxy has using a value called metallicity. This is a really useful metric in principle, Scudder says, because low metallicity values indicate unprocessed gas, and high metallicity values signify heavily recycled gas. Unfortunately, there isn’t a single, clean way of calculating that value. “We don’t have one method that works,” Scudder says. “We have a dozen methods that all kind of work in different contexts.”
Scudder’s latest research, published in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society with coauthors Aidan Khelil ’22 and Jonah Ordower ’25, aimed to make sure that metallicity values were still reliable coming from regions of a galaxy dominated by light from young stars, even as the data available to astronomers became massively more detailed.
In the past, astronomers only had access to a single spectra—a term that describes which wavelengths are present in light—per galaxy. Those wavelengths correspond to different elements, so it’s a way to identify what object (e.g., a star, a pulsar, a black hole) made the light. If this single spectra wasn’t dominated by starlight,
astronomers would toss that galaxy and move on.
Thanks to technology, galaxy images are more detailed; for example, the ones Scudder is working with have about 10,000 galaxies with anywhere between 200 and 2,000 spectra each. You can think of it like astronomers now seeing a 4K image instead of a blurry one. With this newly granular boundary, suddenly it mattered more to know if the dividing lines between starlight and not-starlight were affecting the metallicities.
Scudder took all the public spectral data for these galaxies, to the tune of 1.5 million data points, and ran them through 12 different methods for estimating metallicity values. “This is where data management becomes important, because you will ruin your computer if you ask it to plot 1.5 million things times 12,” she says. “If you ask it, the computer will go, ‘No,’ and shut down.”
She then created a SQL database of these metallicity values and loaded them into computers in her lab for student researchers. Within t hese values, students looked at the image of each galaxy and where the boundary line changed, pixel by pixel, from starlight to not-starlight, with each metallicity estimation method.
Scudder analyzed the boundary to find pixels with trusted metallicity values located right next to a pixel that didn’t seem like starlight. Since there should be a rotational symmetry in a galaxy, she rotated along that plane to find another pixel with the same metallicity value located the same distance from the center—but surrounded by trustworthy pixels.
“If there is not a difference, it tells me that being adjacent to something I don’t trust actually doesn’t matter at all,” she says. “This means the way we’ve been splitting these galaxies up is fine. But if I do see a difference, that tells me we have to be more careful about how we do our metallicity work going forward.” Her result was initially surprising.
“What I found was that it matters some of the time,” Scudder says. For three of the 12 methods she tested, the boundary of star to not-star was getting contaminated, or displaying false positives. The common denominator? Those three methods calculated metallicity only using the ratio of nitrogen to hydrogen.
Scudder suspected the problem was a sensitivity to nitrogen. Young stars have a “shell” of partially ionized material that includes a thin layer of nitrogen. But other celestial objects create different volumes of glowing nitrogen. For example, a supermassive black hole’s higher-energy light produces a thick shell of partially ionized nitrogen, which then per mits a brighter nitrogen glow.
The good news is that Scudder found that the metallicity methods that used elements in addition to nitrogen, like oxygen and sulphur, were not affected. Now that astronomers know this, they can either choose metallicities that aren’t so sensitive to nitrogen or just pay more attention to their boundary conditions. Scudder’s next project is figuring out how to compare these 12 metallicity methods to each other so that researchers can compare directly between the metallicities. Ultimately it means that the data and research up to this point is all OK. “It’s really good news for everything we have done so far,” Scudder says. “I found this result to be really reassuring in many ways.”
This article originally appeared in Volume 1 of the Oberlin Research Review, a new publication that highlights research conducted by Oberlin’s faculty: groundbreaking scientific breakthroughs, incisive cultural analysis, and scholarly work that uncovers new insights into how we understand the world. To read other stories from this publication, visit: oberlin. edu/oberlin-research-review.
Learning & Labor
AUTHOR INTERVIEW
Telling (Love) Stories
BY SERENA ZETS ’22
Dominic Lim ’96 educates readers through romance.
At Oberlin, Dominic Lim ’96 was far too busy on campus to imagine life after college. The psychology and law and society double major sang in the Obertones and was a founding member of the Oberlin Musical Theater Association (OMTA) and Third World Cooperative.
Still, he pondered becoming a psychologist or pursuing his extracurricular passions to work as an actor and singer. And although Lim is now a proud card-carrying Actors’ Equity Association member, he never expected that he would become a bestselling romance author—one whose books cleverly use rich love stories to explore complicated themes of identity, culture, race, and queerness.
“I wanted to put it in a love story because people who are buying and reading romance and reading happy ever afters aren’t necessarily looking for these kinds of issues,” Lim says. “But when they’re there, they are suddenly forced to sort of deal with them and think about them.”
His 2023 debut novel, All the Right Notes, appeared on multiple year-end best-of lists. The success of this book led Lim to his second novel, Karaoke Queen (Forever, 2024), which follows Rex, a Filipino American former drag queen who resurrects his drag persona, Regina, to help save the failing karaoke bar run by his “one that got away” college ex. Unfortunately, Rex realizes that this ex isn’t interested in dating a drag
queen. In response, he decides to hide his drag identity and keep the personas separate, prompting a ruse that becomes increasingly difficult to maintain as Regina’s popularity grows.
“Karaoke Queen is about embracing your true identity,” Lim says. “It’s about love. It’s about gay men being able to embrace the femme and feminine sides of themselves. And it is a statement on what’s going on with drag right now.”
Lim’s own pop culture interests include RuPaul’s Drag Race (both the U.S. and Philippine franchises), Filipino karaoke culture, classic show tunes, and contemporary queer artists like Chappell Roan. When writing, Lim also called back to the pop culture phenomena from his time at Oberlin—“Madonna, the Indigo Girls, Erasure, New Order, Ani DiFranco, George Michael, and all that amazing queer and queer-coded stuff out there,” as he puts it. (Lim previously told Entertainment Weekly that his first exposure to drag was Oberlin’s Drag Ball.) Lim is now working on his third novel.
“Most writers find that a lot of their fantastic writing comes when you’re not doing your actual writing,” he says. “It comes when you’re going for a walk or in the shower or when you’re driving. You need that space for ideas to percolate and pop up.”
But he’s continuing to consider these important themes of identity and performance as he writes books for the next generation of romance readers looking for stories and characters as diverse as the lives they lead.
“I’m currently writing romance, and it is a great way for people to say, ‘Oh, I never knew that Filipino culture was like this. Oh, I’ve never met someone who’s nonbinary or trans. They sound awesome. I would love to meet someone like that.’”
Serena Zets ’22 is a Washington, D.C.based freelance journalist and essayist and a regular contributor to Washington City Paper.
Sound and Vision
Books
NONFICTION
Punishing Putin: Inside the Global Economic War to Bring Down Russia
Stephanie Baker ’89 (SCRIBNER)
In the weeks following Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the news buzzed with reports of U.S.-led economic sanctions, including seizure of superyachts owned by Russian oligarchs. Any hopes that financial pressure would force Russian President Vladimir Putin to turn tail were soon dashed, however, as the brutality of war dominated coverage. But as Bloomberg journalist Stephanie Baker recounts in Punishing Putin, the highwire act of using the world economy to back Putin into a corner has been incredibly
complex and not as effective as some might wish. Baker combines a veteran reporter’s subject matter expertise with vivid writing to tell a dramatic story that continues to unfold before our eyes. —Karen Sandstrom
FICTION
Vinyl Wonderland
Mark Rigney ’89 (CASTLE BRIDGE)
High school dropout Brendan Purcell is reeling. Not only is he grieving the accidental death of his mother, but he’s also drinking far too much and running a record store called Vinyl Wonderland after the owner had a stroke. To add to his stress, the store has a portal—located behind a locked door blocked by an Elvis Presley standee—that leads to a secret land overflowing with piles of junk and a mysterious proprietor named October. Anyone who visits this strange place has
an impossible choice: Choose an item they need or want— but not both. Vinyl Wonderland’s supernatural premise adds intrigue and leads to plenty of surprising plot twists but never overwhelms the novel’s main theme: exploring the emotional highs and lows of being human and trying to pick up the pieces after your life falls apart. Vinyl Wonderland is an affecting, thought-provoking read that lingers after you’re done reading. —Annie Zaleski
FICTION
How To Sleep at Night
Elizabeth Harris ’05
(WILLIAM MORROW)
Humor and political strife abound in How To Sleep at Night, Elizabeth Harris’ zesty debut novel that asks, in part, “Why is being authentic so much more difficult than it looks?” In suburban New Jersey, stay-at-home wife and
mom Nicole tests the boundaries of her traditional heterosexual marriage when she reconnects with Kate, a former lover and successful journalist. Kate’s brother Ethan, meanwhile, decides to run for Congress as a Republican—a choice that puts stress on his marriage to dyed-in-the-wool liberal Gabe. Harris draws her characters with affection and gives them some of the stickiest challenges of our times. —KS
NONFICTION
The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing
Adam Moss ’79
(PENGUIN PRESS)
We typically only see finished movies, songs, books, and art. But how did these creative works actually come together? That’s the premise of this beautifully designed New York Times best seller by Moss, the
Learning & Labor
former editor-in-chief of New York magazine. The Work of Art pairs annotated looks at the creative process— sketches, draft notebook pages, photographs—with in-depth insights from icons such as Twyla Tharp, Sofia Coppola, Marc Jacobs, and the late Stephen Sondheim. The Work of Art exposes the messiness that’s often at the heart of making art without reducing any of the magic built into the final product. For anyone looking for artistic inspiration, this book is crucial reading. —AZ
NONFICTION
The Other Big Bang: The Story of Sex and Its Human Legacy
Eric S. Haag ’90 (COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS)
As Eric Haag writes in The Other Big Bang, the history of sex begins with the 2 billionyear-old emergence of organisms called eukaryotes and continues to the present day to encompass topics such as homosexuality and gender fluidity. Biology forms
the core of this epic tale that is by turns deeply science-y, provocative, and—as exemplified by chapters such as “The Left Fin of Darkness” (about sexual fluidity in fish) and “Period Piece” (the biological advantages of menstruation)—highly entertaining. Haag exudes enthusiasm not just for science per se, but for its power to illuminate questions that go to the core of who we are as human beings. —KS
NONFICTION
A Chance To Harmonize: How FDR’s Hidden Music Unit Sought To Save America from the Great Depression—One Song at a Time
Sheryl Kaskowitz ’95 (PEGASUS BOOKS)
The subtitle of A Chance To Harmonize reveals the fascinating premise of this book: the role folk music played in building community and boosting morale during the 1930s,
when people formed government homesteads in rural areas amidst societal upheaval. Via rigorous research, Kaskowitz weaves together an absorbing narrative full of memorable figures: Charles Seeger, father of Pete Seeger, who led the Music Unit; Margaret Valiant, a music leader who devised activities and oversaw performances on the homesteads; and Sidney Robertson, who recorded these songs. The Music Unit documented 800 songs before it was shut down as its activities were seen as being too close to socialism. Kaskowitz deftly shows how the work done in this era endures and has parallels to the present day. —AZ
NONFICTION
Attention Is Discovery: The Life and Legacy of Astronomer Henrietta Leavitt
Anna
Von Mertens (MIT PRESS)
In fall 2023, the Allen Memorial Art Museum
presented an exhibition by Anna Von Mertens called Henrietta Leavitt: A Life Spent Looking. The astronomer—who attended Oberlin between 1885 and 1888 before leaving to attend Radcliffe College— later worked as a “computer” in the Harvard College Observatory, where she did groundbreaking research into stars and outer space. “Through her work, astronomers learned that our solar system is not the center of the universe,” the Allen noted, “that galaxies exist beyond our own, and that our universe is expanding.” Von Mertens expands upon her work in this lavish illustrated biography. Through insights into her life and research, including essays that contextualize her work, Leavitt finally gets her due as a trailblazing scientist. For good measure, the book even ends with photos of the Allen’s exhibition— emphasizing Oberlin’s role in shaping Leavitt’s work. —AZ
Music
Heaven, or Someplace as Nice
Josh Ritter ’99 (PYTHEAS RECORDINGS)
Josh Ritter’s cozy 12th studio album is described as “a brand-new set of original songs meant to be heard together.” That’s partly due to how quickly it was recorded—live in the studio with few overdubs—and its cohesive sound: It’s a “cosmic cowboy mini-album,” as Ritter puts it, with contributions from jazz guitarist Bill Frisell and a vibe of immediacy. Ghostly piano and feathery guitars propel solemn songs like “Stretching Wire” and “The Bride,” while “Where the Dream Ends” is a strippedback song dominated by acoustic riffs and Ritter’s vocals. The songwriter also turns in his own version of “Only a River,” a sparse, twangy meditation that appeared on Bob Weir’s 2016 solo record Blue Mountain and was played
live by Bob Dylan several times in 2023. —AZ
American Woman
Juliana Soltis MM ’14 (NAVONA)
Cellist Juliana Soltis did extensive research for her album American Woman, which throws the spotlight on works by women composers who are unjustly obscure and underrepresented in the modern canon. Speaking of Helen Crane, who’s represented here with a six-part opus, Soltis notes that the composer “appears in no modern musical references, and the story of her life had to be piecedtogether from fragments scattered across continents.” The meticulous research paid off: Recorded as a collaboration with pianist Ruoting Li, American Woman is a mesmerizing collection of pieces by Mary Howe, Amy Beach, Margaret Bonds, Dorothy Rudd Moore, and Florence Price, all played with tender reverence. —AZ
Shatter the Glass Sanctuary
Naomi Moon Siegel ’06 (#BOR-110)
In recent years, composertrombonist Naomi Moon Siegel moved to Missoula, Montana, after many years living in Seattle. That transitional period informs the conservatory grad’s third album, Shatter the Glass Sanctuary, which she recorded with a group of musicians from Seattle. “Writing this music was a catharsis for me, as I broke down and broke open to allow myself to feel the grief and heartbreak of leaving a city and community I loved,” she notes, “even as I was so curious about living in a smaller community more integrated with nature.” The resulting music, which combines improvisation with written material, reflects the emotional ups and downs of such a move, with meditative moments (“The Adventures of Violet & Pilot,” piano-led “Seep into My Pores”) adjacent to more frenzied
compositions (the brisk, jazzy “Sabotage”) and a suite with nods to funk and free jazz that feels like a satisfying musical denouement. —AZ
Two Wires and a Spark
Marian Runk ’03 (SELF-RELEASED)
The biography on Marian Runk’s website describes the Chicago-based artist as a “dancer, birdwatcher, visual artist, political activist, writer, and musician.” Two Wires and a Spark, her second studio album, is a colorful folk record with a vibrant sound palette: steady drums, lush acoustic guitars, lively banjo, gorgeous strings, the occasional scuzzy electric guitar. Runk’s earnest, deeply personal lyrical storytelling evokes that of today’s indie folk songwriters like Adrienne Lenker, while she has a kind of vintage sound reminiscent of 1960s folk acts like The Mamas & The Papas. —Sloane DiBari ’27
M b l
A PEEK INTO THE EXPANSIVE WORLD OF TONY-WINNING COSTUME DESIGNER MONTANA LEVI BLANCO ’07.
BY SERENA ZETS ’22 PORTRAITS BY SAMANTHA JANE
OBERLIN ALUMNI MAGAZINE SPRING
MMONTANA LEVI BLANCO ’07 HAS BEEN ON A treasure hunt his whole life. Growing up in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Blanco spent his childhood playing in the studio of his grandmother, a lampshade artisan. Some of his earliest memories involve toying with beads and cutting electrical wire to create makeshift arts and crafts projects. Just like his grandmother, he developed a knack for turning simple materials into intricate creations—and crafting a new world with his own hands.
Decades later, as a costume designer living and working in New York City, Blanco designs worlds so vivid and textured that they transform sold-out theaters into other places. “When I started to train and learn about materials—how they’re made, how they’re woven—I realized that I had this subconscious knowledge and memory of what types of materials might be more appropriate for certain garments or what’s not good for movement,” he says. “And I think that comes from being around it so much so young. Everything I work with now are things I’ve been touching and engaging with since my earliest memories.”
Since committing his professional life to costume design in 2011 while on a fellowship at the McNay Art Museum, Blanco has worked on some of the most exciting productions in New York, including costuming two Metropolitan Opera productions (Champion and El Niño) and Michael R. Jackson’s acclaimed Broadway musical A Strange Loop. But his Broadway debut, for the 2022 revival of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth, was even more impressive: Blanco won a Tony for Best Costume Design in a Play.
Incredibly enough, A Strange Loop won Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical that same night, meaning Blanco was suddenly the costume designer for two Tonywinning shows. But he was even more thankful that his most important inspiration—his grandmother—witnessed
“[A LOT OF WHAT I DO IS] OBSERVING HOW PEOPLE DRESS IN A WAY THAT TELLS SOME KIND OF STORY ABOUT WHO THEY ARE.”
this win. “I dedicate this to my mother and grandmother, two Mexican American single mothers,” Blanco said in his acceptance speech. “They are the reason I am here.”
Several years later, his gratitude for his grandmother is still evident. “She could see that all the love and work that she put into me and my mom meant something,” Blanco says. “Something came from it. Yes, there’s professional validation, but there are moments that come along that matter to your family. My grandma could go to church, and people knew about the Tony.”
Blanco’s Tony win closed the loop on the familial legacy of creation introduced to him by his grandmother; it also propelled him into a future of professional opportunity. Through the end of 2026, Blanco has multiple projects opening across the country, including This House performed by Opera Theatre of St. Louis and the highly anticipated Purple Rain world premiere at the State Theatre in Minneapolis. “What a blessing to be in a profession where you can engage in this full kaleidoscope and the full depth of the human experience in a really deep way,” he says.
A NOTHER ONE OF BLANCO’S EARLY MEMORIES IS “treasure hunting” at estate sales and yard sales with his family. “It’s fully incorporated into every thread of what I do, a little bit of treasure hunting,” he says. “You’re sifting, sifting, sifting—and then there’s this emotional connection to an object. I really do feel like there is a creative art to sifting through the overlooked to find the gem.”
Blanco still spends his free time sifting through estate sales, thrift stores, and costume shops hoping to find the right gem for the next of his many projects. A large part of being a costume designer is weaving together these tiny treasures into a cohesive visual landscape. Designers must remain attentive to how the drape of a dress moves when an actor is dancing, how the lead’s jewelry looks under
ABUNDANT ACCOLADES Montana Levi Blanco ’07 is the costume designer for A Strange Loop (top), which won Tony Awards for Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical. He also won his own Tony for Best Costume Design in a Play for the 2022 revival of Thornton Wilder’s The Skin of Our Teeth (right).
stage lights during their final monologue, whether a mask will work with a mic, and so much more.
“What I’ve realized about doing costume is that the aesthetic final product part of it is really 30 to 40 percent of what I do,” Blanco explains. “A lot of what I do is looking at the world, observing the world, observing how people dress in a way that tells some kind of story about who they are.”
Designing The Skin of Our Teeth required Blanco to create over 100 costumes covering three distinct
American time periods: the Civil War, the 1920s, and the mid-20th century. All of the costumes are brightly colored, structured, and layered. For example, his favorite costume from The Skin of Our Teeth is worn by the Fortune Teller, who is introduced in Act 2 as a fixture of the 1922 Atlantic City boardwalk. While researching materials, Blanco found a “gorgeous piano shawl from the 1920s” that became the skirt and “aesthetic centerpiece” of the outfit.
“It was also a relic from the historical period we were depicting onstage, giving the clothing a subtle aura of depth and honesty,” he adds. “For me, it was important to imbue this costume with a sense of antiquity and age. My design research led me to period photography of mystics, soothsayers, and Romani peoples. One thing I found quite beautiful in this imagery was the collaging of numerous fabrics into a single garment. It is as if each textile was collected over time, each textile a singular story to tell.”
Perfecting these details requires a close eye and a deep care for the work, which is why Blanco’s approach is rooted in a compassionate witnessing of the actor in front of him. The emotional integrity of a costume—and an actor’s comfort in wearing it—matters as much as historical accuracy.
Now, Blanco spends the first rehearsal taking note of what each actor is wearing to gauge what types of clothing makes them feel most comfortable and confident. During subsequent fittings with actors leading up to opening night, he asks them questions about what clothing feels most affirming for them to ensure that they’re best equipped to do their job.
“My most fulfilling moments in the theater have been
moments of deep vulnerability with performers,” Blanco says. “Some of that includes working with actors with disabilities and learning how to support them, clothe them, and make them feel strong—[or] working with actors with different gender expressions, some fully formed and some in different moments of development.
“I didn’t realize I had all these human skill sets that would be valuable as a costume designer,” he continues. “There’s a deep responsibility we have as costume designers that goes far beyond the clothes and the character. It’s really about two humans learning about each other and supporting each other.”
Montana Levi Blanco ’07 uses his research skills and love of history to create beautiful costumes that actors love to wear.
THIS MARRIAGE OF EMOTION AND PRECISION reflects the tactile knowledge Blanco developed as a child, paired with the research methodologies he honed at Oberlin, having graduated with a double degree in history and oboe performance. Although Blanco didn’t participate in any theater productions or operas—in fact, he never even played in an orchestra pit or for an opera—Oberlin nevertheless prepared him for a career in the theater.
Blanco would visit the bookstore during add-drop at the start of every semester to survey the required books for each class and choose his electives based on what readings drew him in. Over time, he realized that history classes called to him; in fact, he viewed Emerita Professor of History Carol Lasser as a mentor. “By the end of my time at Oberlin, Carol helped me realize that I was interested in disparate histories and how these histories were in conversation with each other,” Blanco
“EVERY PROJECT I DO REQUIRES A NEW SET OF BOOKS AND MOVIES AND EXHIBITIONS YOU CAN GO TO AND CONVERSATIONS YOU CAN HAVE.
says. “These comparative histories are very applicable to what I do now.”
The late oboe professor James Caldwell also played a foundational role in Blanco’s creative practice and approach to leadership. (Caldwell’s love for bonsai trees— and how he viewed tending to his trees as similar to caring for his students—stuck with Blanco; in fact, Blanco credits his love of plants to the professor.) Studying music in a conservatory environment also “teaches you discipline, failure, practicing, and competition,” Blanco says. “And you are one part of this greater whole. It’s very similar to the theater.”
Looking back, Blanco says his time at Oberlin cultivated what he describes as an “intimate expansiveness” that demanded he learn widely about new things—and learn more deeply about the things he thought he already knew. “Every project I do requires a new set of books and movies and exhibitions you can go to and conversations you can have. … It combines all of these things that Oberlin taught me: a love of reading, learning, and conversation.”
After Oberlin, he earned a master’s degree in public humanities at Brown University and an MFA in design at t he Yale School of Drama. While in these programs, Blanco thought about the experience of the broader public engaging with his curatorial work, which led him to costume design. “The fact that I discovered the theater at 27 shows you can do two professional trainings and think that’s what your life’s purpose is, and you can still find later on what your life’s next purpose is,” Blanco says. “I’m only 40; I may have a moment where I find another life’s purpose.”
BLANCO AND HIS YALE CLASSMATE LILEANA
Blain- Cruz, the director of both The Skin of Our Teeth and El Niño, also cultivated a collaborative working relationship that helped shape their respective careers. “When I moved to New York, Lileana went to these institutions and producers and advocated for me and got
me my first jobs off-Broadway,” Blanco says. “That’s how I also started. I owe her a lot. A lot of my trajectory is tied to the directors and crews I work with.”
As it happens, Blain-Cruz is directing Purple Rain, while another one of the pair’s longtime friends and collaborators, the Pulitzer Prize finalist Branden JacobsJenkins, wrote the play adaptation. For Blanco, the first step in preparing for a project as massive as Purple Rain is to do his usual archival research and extensive reading so he can “pull any images that are evocative or inspirational,” he says. “You have to prepare your eye and your mind. In many ways, the theater is the study of humanity and relationships.”
Since graduating, Blanco has accumulated an extensive library of books; among his greatest textual influences are Isabel Wilkerson’s nonfiction masterpiece about the Great Migration, The Warmth of Other Suns, and Min Jin Lee’s fictional epic Pachinko. “As a designer, it’s our tools,” he says of this library. “We have this resource of the internet and Googling things, but it’s important to reference physical books that you’re not going to encounter on the internet.” Ever the historian and storyteller, Blanco is particularly inspired by generational family epics, both fiction and nonfiction. “The specificity of character and nuance of familial dynamics over a period time is a gift for any storyteller—and most certainly for a costume designer,” he says. “These books have a profound way of telling the story of a people—or a nation—by chronicling the minutiae of everyday existence.”
The Minneapolis premiere of Purple Rain is billed as “pre-Broadway,” meaning that Blanco’s return to Broadway is likely imminent. In 2026, Blanco will also return to the Metropolitan Opera for Lincoln in the Bardo, an opera once again directed by Blain-Cruz.
It’s an ambitious time that Blanco is well prepared for with his scavenged treasures, beloved books, curious friends, and supportive family by his side. After all, the productions he works on are richer, more vibrant, more colorful, and more emotionally compelling because of the love and attention he gives to not just the costumes, but his team, the actors, and the original works.
“I think that love is really threaded through every element of costume,” Blanco says. “We are dealing so intimately with the performers, the actors. Love is threaded into the joy and the safe space my team creates. Love is threaded into the creative team we’ve been working with for over a decade. … Being a costume designer involves so much emotional and human connection that is very private and very intimate. That’s where this thread of love comes through.”
Serena Zets ’22 is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance journalist and essayist.
a pipeline podcasts. to
Triton Digital’s 2024 U.S. Podcast Report found that 44.2% of Americans listen to podcasts monthly, a 23.1% increase since 2021. Unsurprisingly, Obies are leading the charge; in fact, as Robert Krulwich ’69 puts it, “the Oberlin avalanche is and was very noticeable” in podcasting. So why are Obies so drawn to audio storytelling? We asked alums working in all areas of podcasting to explore how and why Obies have been integral to the rise of the medium.
Jad Abumrad ’95 and Robert Krulwich ’69 Radiolab radiolab.org
As the long-running co-hosts of Radiolab, Jad Abumrad ’95 and Robert Krulwich ’69 made sound investments in the art of storytelling. Launched by Abumrad in 2002, the show is widely credited for launching podcasting into the cultural zeitgeist. Radiolab conveys complicated topics—for
example, how we define race, what forms our ideas of self, and how plants communicate with one another—in an accessible, sonically interesting way. Episodes layer interview segments into live dialogue and Abumrad’s innovative use of music—the latter of which Krulwich describes as an “audio cushion for thinking.”
The early days of Radiolab were full of experimentation. Operating on WNYC’s AM frequency on Sunday nights, the show existed in a lowstakes environment with few listeners. This lack of
audience pressure, coupled with the creativity that often comes with latenight/early-morning studio access, allowed Abumrad and Krulwich to explore unconventional audio storytelling.
“It was very impractical,” Krulwich recalls with a smile. “Like jazz improvisation—we’d go in and talk, and then we’d make another version because we had to correct all our mistakes. Then we’d make another version—and then another version. And then we’d have 13 takes on things, and Jad had to edit
all of them into place while I went to the beach or sipped Coca-Cola or something.”
Radiolab’s inventive sound design was just as attractive as its hodgepodge narrative improvisations. For example, Abumrad once orchestrated an entire orchestral symphony, complete with a full choir, to convey the feeling of a mantis shrimp seeing a rainbow.
“[The sound] was kind of a product of who we were—and are—and what we had chosen to think about,” Abumrad explains. “Robert is the most musical storyteller you will ever meet in your
Jad Abumrad ’95 and Robert Krulwich ’69
life—metaphors fall out of his mouth without him even thinking—so part of it was me responding as a musician to him. It was really a question of whether we could get our imaginations and his musical sense running together.”
Today Radiolab has more than 10 million downloads monthly. Although the men no longer host the show, their current projects continue the Radiolab spirit. Abumrad is teaching and lecturing at Vanderbilt University, where he set up a research lab and community space called Studio 608; has a new audio series due in late 2025; and is composing and working on theater pieces. Krulwich, meanwhile, is working on science projects at museums and stories for CBS.
Today, Abumrad and Krulwich have their own theories about why Obies gravitate toward podcasting. “Something about it is curiosity,” Krulwich says. “Oberlin may attract a certain number of people who are just intensely curious about what they’re seeing and learning and experiencing.”
Abumrad agrees. “Oberlin attracts a certain kind of person and then engenders in them a deep restlessness,” he says, and observes, “You get a sense of, ‘You’re gonna hear me!’ I think that funnels people to podcasting: Anywhere you can express who you are and what you think, you’ll find Obies there.” —Travis O’Daniel ’26
a pipeline to podcasts
Thornton ’15
“Oberlin may attract a certain number of people who are just intensely curious about what they’re seeing and learning and experiencing.”
— Robert Krulwich ’69
The Historian
Katie Thornton ’15 The Divided Dial wnycstudios.org
In fall 2020, Katie Thornton ’15 was driving in northern Minnesota as part of a reporting project for National Geographic. As she flipped through the radio, only one station came in, airing a conservative Christian show called Focus on the Family. Thornton kept the show on, in part to have a voice to accompany her on the drive. But it piqued her interest.
“I started to envision this alternate reality in which I lived in that area , and this was the one radio station that I had access to,” Thornton explains. “I [wondered] how much of the very conservative and right-wing dominance on talk radio is consumer preference and consumer choice versus political and economic strategy.”
These thoughts resulted in Thornton’s historical deep-dive podcast, the Divided Dial, for WNYC’s On the Media. The six-episode series investigated the rise and present dominance of conservative ideology on talk radio—think Rush Limbaugh—and won a 2023 Peabody Award.
For longer versions of these stories, visit go.oberlin.edu/ podcast-feature
Thornton has always loved radio, especially the way it cuts across demographics and creates aural experiences for listeners. While at Oberlin, she had a radio show on WOBC each year and served as operations manager her
Alex Blumberg ’89 Co-founder
Gimlet Media
Alix Spiegel ’94
This American Life founding producer/ Invisibilia co-founder
Brian Verne ’09 CEO Wave Sports & Entertainment, producer of New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce, Not Gonna Lie with Kylie Kelce
Katie
first year and program director during her fourth year. But Thornton, who majored in history, has also always loved digging into archives. After graduating, she “approached a lot of places that I thought could have a public history component to their organization and asked if they would let me design a job and do it.”
Much to her surprise, a cemetery in Minneapolis was game and she became its historian. This job eventually led to her earning a 2018–19 FulbrightNational Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellowship. She traveled to England and Singapore and researched the relationship between death practices and modes of remembering the dead in an increasingly digitally connected world.
Today, Thornton balances her audio journalism with long-form print work for publications such as the Guardian, the Atlantic, and Rolling Stone. “I love working in both print and audio because I get to choose which format is right for which story,” she says.
“Oftentimes there can be a sense within the industry that you have your beat, and you have your format, and that’s where you stay. People of all ages right now want in-depth news—they want to be informed.”
Thornton is currently teaching a course at Macalester College called Podcasting: Creative and Practical Elements of Audio Nonfiction and in
May released the second season of the Divided Dial, which focuses on shortwave radio. “The series is looking at the way that this medium went from a utopian communication tool to a propaganda tool for the American right and the militia movement, and then its very strange, continued existence today, which is this invisible world that’s coursing all around us at all times,” she says. “Once you tap into it, there’s a whole lot to learn.”
—Eloise Rich ’26
The Storytellers
Heather Freeman ’97 & Amber Walker ’11 Magic in the United States magicintheunitedstates.com
Several years ago, Heather Freeman ’97 was set to have her first major film about witchcraft, social media, and information technology picked up and produced. But after her funding was frozen due to COVID-19, she instead pivoted and adapted the script into a podcast: Magic in the United States.
Hosted by Freeman, the three spellbinding seasons explore the mystical undercurrents of American folklore, mysticism, and esotericism with sharp wit and infectious curiosity. Episode topics include the folk-magic origins of Mormonism; the popularity of spiritual hashtags on social media; and the origins of mystic figures like St. Cyprian.
“A part of the reason why I went to Oberlin was to figure out who I was on my own terms—and I was able to do that.”
— Amber Walker ’11
Michael Barone ’68 Host Pipedreams
Willa Rubin ’16 Associate producer Planet Money
Roman Mars ’94 Creator and host 99% Invisible
Heather Freeman ’97
Amber Walker ’11
a pipeline to podcasts
After being raised a “militant atheist,” Freeman, who’s a professor of digital media in the art and art history department at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, first turned to spirituality after the death of her mother. “I struggled for a long time trying to decide what I thought about the world around me in terms of the purpose of being and things like that,” she says. “After my mom passed away, it reintroduced to me that I can have a material, rationalist understanding of the world and how things operate but still carve out space for awe and intangibles like ancestors and spirits of place.”
Magic in the United States was launched thanks to a $389,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) After being approved for the grant, Freeman was paired with a producer at Public Radio Exchange (PRX) who turned out to be an Obie—Amber Walker ’11. “It was funny because PRX has put me with other Obies on projects,” Walker recounts with a laugh. “I wonder if that’s something they’re consciously doing because I [also] work on American Railroad podcast with Rhiannon Giddens ’00.”
Freeman had already contacted historians and academics as a part of her NEH grant proposal, but much work remained. That’s where Walker, who became interested in podcast producing after earning a master’s degree in digital
innovation and journalism at New York University, came in. “I worked to make sure Heather had everything she needed to get the show moving,” she explains, “like scheduling interviews with guests, making sure transcripts were where they needed to be, pulling the tape so that she could dig into it.”
Walker and Freeman graduated from Oberlin with double majors—the former in Africana studies and gender, sexuality, and feminist studies, the latter in German studies and studio art—and both say Oberlin sparked their professional careers.
“[Retired Young Hunter Professor of Art and Africana Studies] Johnny Coleman taught this class on sound for artists, and that was my first introduction to the idea of approaching sound as a visual artist,” Freeman says. “It exploded my understanding of all creative disciplines in so many ways. It merged together everything that I loved about storytelling and everything I loved about the acoustic space.”
Adds Walker: “A part of the reason why I went to Oberlin was to figure out who I was on my own terms—and I was able to do that, which was great. But I took that approach into my professional life by trying to find work that made my heart sing, working on projects with people whose values aligned with mine and things that were personally interesting and compelling.” —TOD
“[What] works for our listeners is that conversation … We’re not a menopause podcast, but we’re a podcast for women over 40.”
— Kim France ’87
The Media Innovator
Kim France ’87 Everything Is Fine instagram.com/eifpodcast
“For women over 40. All the stuff no one talks about.” Such is the description for Everything Is Fine, the podcast cohosted by Kim France ’87 and her longtime friend Jen Romolini that features honest, advice-filled conversations about big topics including but not limited to ambition, aging, creativity, health, parenting, and careers. The podcast occasionally books conversations with writers, artists, activists, teachers, and figures in the fashion world. But France notes that the episodes that feature the women chatting with each other have resonated even more.
Kim France ’87
“The thing that we found works for our listeners is that conversation, that feeling like you’re in the room with a couple of friends,” she says. “We’re not a menopause podcast, but we’re a podcast for women over 40. A lot of what we talk about has to do with the changes in women’s bodies, and that’s still, even in the year 2025, not something that people talk about a lot. There’s more conversation around it, but there’s still not nearly enough. And people were starving for that.”
Earlier in her career, France was a staff writer at the teen magazine Sassy launched in 1988 by Jane Pratt ’84—and also spent time at Spin and New York In 2000, she became the founding editor of Lucky, a trailblazing publication dedicated to fashion and lifestyle. France later started an email newsletter called Girls of a Certain Age, which mixes memoir and the kind of carefully curated fashion tips for which Lucky was known.
France says her newsletter’s readers wanted her to start a podcast, so it was kismet when documentary filmmaker Tally Abecassis approached her a little over five years ago about starting a podcast for women over 40. In the time since, France is gratified that Everything is Fine has amassed a loyal, passionate audience that has formed a tight-knit community; among other things, listeners chat about the podcast in online spaces and
“You’re out in the fields, and you’re face-to-face with human stories and narrative. It really feels like an Oberlin creative disciplinary course come to life.”
— Alexander Overington ’10
Alexander
have scheduled in-person Everything Is Fine meetups. “It’s amazing to have the podcast come out on a Monday and already have conversation about that episode on the Facebook page Monday morning,” she says. “You had very little access to your audience in magazine publishing. We would do focus groups every once in a while to get access to them. [And] you get letters to the editor at magazines, traditionally, but that’s just a micro fraction of the actual readership. It’s much easier to know the impact you’re having quickly.”
As for why France thinks Obies are drawn to podcasting: “For the same reason they were in magazine publishing 30 years ago,” she says. “There’s a lot of creativity in both of those fields—but at the same time a lot of the rigor. And Oberlin is good at valuing both creativity and rigor.”
—Annie Zaleski
The Sound Designer
Alexander Overington ’10 Composer, producer, engineer, sound designer overington.info
Alexander Overington ’10 fell into podcasting through serendipity. After graduating with a double degree in composition and TIMARA, he began working at public radio station WQXR in New York City, ripping compact discs for the classical music station’s library. While at
the station, he cofounded and oversaw a podcast called Meet the Composer, which profiled living composers.
Overington had a lot of leeway to make the show his own. “As the producer and sound designer, I tried as much as I could to edit and feature the composer’s music in such a way that the episode itself was put together as an homage to their style and life,” he says. “Because it’s a show about contemporary classical music, you can add a lot of interesting sound design that’s in dialogue with the narrative.”
The second season of Meet the Composer won a Peabody Award, opening the door for collaborations with bigger names such as Paul Simon. But this success also laid the groundwork for Overington’s own expansive career. He did sound design for WNYC podcasts Dolly Parton’s America and 2 Dope Queens; has engineering credits on albums by Anohni and Damon Albarn; and developed content for Major League Baseball. Overington also composed the seven-second audio logo that’s still heard today before WNYC’s podcasts.
Earlier in his career, he also worked at Radiolab alongside Jad Abumrad ’95; among other things, Overington became technical director for More Perfect, the podcast about the Supreme Court. “When [Radiolab] called and asked me to work with them, it was a ‘pinch-me’ moment,” he says. “Stepping into
’10
Overington
their office really felt like going home to the TIMARA studios and to Oberlin.”
Overington cites his double degree experience as integral to giving him a “really great crash course in collaboration and what makes you a great collaborator. As an acoustic composer, you’re constantly in dialogue with musicians, conductors, and your peers.
As an electronic musician, you’re constantly in dialogue with technology, as well as other artists, dancers, and writers and composers.”
Oberlin also prepared him well for the nimble world of podcasting.
“Working with the dance department and the theater department, learning how to solve problems on the fly, and bringing your creative practice to a larger, multifaceted problem was great training for the podcast industry,” Overington says.
“Every day is a negotiation with a journalist, a musician, a fact-checker. You’re out in the fields, and you’re faceto-face with human stories and narrative. It really feels like an Oberlin creative disciplinary course come to life.” —AZ
The Builder
Ben Calhoun ’01
The Daily, the New York Times nytimes.com
Between his third and fourth years at Oberlin, Ben Calhoun ’01 had an internship at public radio station WBEZ in Chicago and a job delivering pizza
a pipeline to podcasts
for Papa John’s. During a delivery one day, as he was listening to an episode of This American Life about business conventions, the brakes in his car stopped working. Then things got worse: Panicked, he touched the hot rotor on the brakes.
“I’m sitting in my car, my hand is burning, and I have to figure out what I’m going to do with all this pizza,” he says. “But all I wanted was to hear what happened next in a Nancy Updike story on that episode.”
Determined to learn how to create these compelling stories, Calhoun landed a job at WBEZ, then home to This American Life, four days after graduation. “I was like, ‘I will do whatever work I need to do to be around the people who understand this craft so I can be exposed to it
and learn the tools,’” he says, noting that one of his tasks was photocopying manuals for digital editing software. Calhoun eventually became a news reporter at WBEZ and did documentarystyle work like photo essays in galleries on the side before finally having a chance to hone his long-form audio storytelling skills on staff at This American Life. While working there, he was part of the team that won the first Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting.
Today, Calhoun manages the New York Times ’ popular podcast The Daily and the team that creates the show. “The job does feel like a surprisingly fortuitous combination of the two things that I spent a lot of time trying to learn how to do,” he says. “[The Daily
Nancy Giles ’81 Host The Giles Files
Erin Keating ’94 Host Hotter Than Ever
Béa Victoria Albina ’01 Host Feminist Wellness
Ben Calhoun ’01
is] news, and it’s long-form storytelling that allows us to take a news moment and then place it into a narrative context, which is so powerful for people.”
Calhoun sees links between this job and his time at Oberlin, specifically his tenure at WOBC. As station manager, he volunteered to fill in for any shift someone had to miss—meaning he spun indie rock, hip-hop, and jazz or did talk radio—and implemented work groups to keep operations running smoothly; these teams built new shelves, organized music, and even rebuilt the live studio.
“[At WOBC] I discovered how much I enjoy getting the honor and the privilege to be at the center of a team that’s making something collectively—a true collective effort to build something in service of an idea or a show or a mission that feels larger than all of us,” Calhoun says. “That’s one of the things about my job that I love on a daily basis.” —AZ
The Culture Enthusiast
Linda Holmes ’93 Pop Culture Happy Hour npr.org/podcast
In Back After This, the delightful new novel by Linda Holmes ’93, Cecily Foster is an audio editor and producer immersed in the world of podcasts. “She wound up being in podcasting, I think, for the same reason that everybody
“The two biggest things that I developed academically at Oberlin were writing and critical thinking.”
— Linda Holmes ’93
in rom-coms used to be in magazine publishing,” Holmes says. “It gives you a lot of opportunities to have people have reasons to go out and do things that they’re not ordinarily doing.”
In Cecily’s case, this means begrudgingly being the subject of a podcast in which she goes on 20 (mostly dubious) blind dates—an experience that complicates her unexpectedly exciting love life. But Holmes, who’s the New York Times bestselling author of 2019’s Evvie Drake Starts Over, also wanted to write about the world of podcasting because she was “frustrated by the quality of fictional representations of audio and podcasting, which range from pretty OK to genuinely terrible. … So
part of it was, ‘Where can I offer a new set of eyes into a setting that I know a lot about?’”
Indeed, when she’s not writing rom-com fiction, Holmes is talking about popular culture on NPR, including on the podcast she co-created, Pop Culture Happy Hour. (In the author’s note of Back After This, she stresses that the book is “not a story about my own career, nor is it a veiled exposé.”) The podcast consists of smart 20-minute discussions about hot topics people are talking about: the polarizing season finale of The White Lotus; Lady Gaga’s latest album, Mayhem; terrible TV shows you still binge-watch.
Holmes and her NPR colleague Stephen Thompson started Pop Culture Happy Hour in 2010, inspired by the music discussions at All Songs Considered and a belief that the roundtable format would work well with TV and film as well. “The original impetus was we could take these conversations that we have about, like, American Idol and do them as audio,” she says. “We just wanted to have really good conversations.” The pair brainstormed the nuts and bolts of the show in Thompson’s living room, recruiting like-minded colleagues and producing the show in their free time after business hours.
Holmes didn’t come to NPR to do audio storytelling; initially she
Linda Holmes ’93
a pipeline to podcasts
was hired to write a pop culture blog. This wasn’t her only unexpected career pivot. After majoring in government—and taking sociology classes and logic —she went to law school directly after graduation. “The two biggest things that I developed academically at Oberlin were writing and critical thinking,” Holmes says.
Even though her life doesn’t involve being a practicing lawyer, she certainly sees ways that law school influences her current work. “If you can put together a legal argument that says, ‘I’m trying to prove to you why I think [something is] true and why I think this is the strongest argument about how to think about this thing,’ you use the same thing in criticism and in trying to work your way through anything complex.”
—AZ
The Next Generation
How current Oberlin students are set up for podcast success
When Assistant Professor of Creative Writing
Ghassan Abou-Zeineddine started teaching at Oberlin, he attended a meet-andgreet with students interested in creative writing. “I said, ‘My interests are in fiction, then a bit of creative nonfiction … and I’m also really interested in podcasting,’”
Co-host
The EuroWhat? podcast
he recalls, noting this admission sparked quite a bit of interest. “A crowd came up to me—and all they wanted to know about was podcasts.”
This interest wasn’t surprising, as Oberlin already boasts an impressive network of alumni in audio journalism. But by embracing experimentation over convention and emphasizing craft, the college is creating a sound foundation for the next generation of podcasters and podcast lovers.
Multiple Oberlin faculty are contributing to the burgeoning field of podcast pedagogy, teaching courses that emphasize the art of the podcast via histories of audio storytelling, production skills, and the specificity of writing for the ear.
David Gutherz ’09, a visiting assistant professor of cinema and media, taught a class in spring 2025 called Intro to Audio Documentary and Drama, which covered over a century’s worth of media and theory. “One of my principles as a pedagogue is that we have to estrange ourselves from the subject of our study in order to be able to see or hear it,” says Gutherz, who has worked for NPR’s podcast Invisibilia, which was co-founded by Alix Spiegel ’94.
But above all, he wants to cultivate a capacity for listening—something echoed by Joe Richman ’87, a Peabody Award-winning producer and reporter and
the founder of Radio Diaries Richman’s spring 2025 class Journalistic Skills as Life Skills emphasized that public radio is inherently made with love and care. “For audio storytelling, the best thing to do is go out there and do it: Talk to people, edit tape, try to write, have people edit your writing,” Richman says. “There’s something really profound and important about getting better about talking to people we don’t know.”
Oberlin also prioritizes interdisciplinary study—like cross-listed courses—and by taking a holistic approach to audio storytelling. Podcasting has been used as an alternative to traditional written midterms and final projects in the environmental studies and cinema and media departments, mimicking the dynamic exchange of ideas during in-class discussions.
Abou-Zeineddine also approaches audio storytelling in a uniquely Oberlin fashion. His fall 2024 class The Art of Podcasting was designed to explore narrative form in audio storytelling, both fiction and nonfiction. “[At Oberlin] we really preach, ‘Don’t just take courses in creative writing; take courses in film, in dance, in art, because these different art forms can actually complement your writing,’” he says. “There’s that spirit of collaboration I see in our students, and that really sets the groundwork for audio storytelling.” —ER
David J. HeitlerKlevans ’88
Music For The New Revolution
Mike McComb ’05 Co-host
Michon Boston ’84 Co-host
Historical Drama with The Boston Sisters
ComingFull Circle
A concert performance of the Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Omar brings together multiple generations of alums.
BY JEREMY REYNOLDS ’15
Halfway through an early December Oberlin Orchestra rehearsal in Finney Chapel, laughter erupts from the stage after an unexpected “bang!” A clip-on light from a choir member’s music folder fell from the balcony onto a timpani. The moment provides a brief moment of levity in an otherwise intense evening of music making.
3.
4. A vibrant orchestra rehearsal in Finney Chapel a few days before Omar
5. Giddens and mezzosoprano Krysty Swann share the stage.
Under Finney’s vaulted ceilings , the orchestra, several star vocal soloists, and the conservatory’s vocal ensembles—including the Oberlin College Choir, Oberlin Gospel Choir, and Oberlin Musical Union—have gathered for a final runthrough of Rhiannon Giddens ’00’s Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Omar. Just days later, the groups would perform two sold-out concert performances—one in Finney and another at the Maltz Performing Arts Center in Cleveland. Omar, with a libretto and music by Giddens and orchestrations by composer Michael Abels, is based on the 1831 autobiography of Omar ibn Said, a Muslim American slave who wrote mostly in Arabic of his capture and life in the U.S. The opera begins with music Giddens adapted from one of the first written transcriptions of music by a Black musician in the New World, a piece she says was called “Coromantee.”
At the rehearsal, a solo viola melody danced lightly over a trudging percussive accompaniment; the roots of what would become Bluegrass are seeded into the instrument’s harmonic language.
“[Omar is] a signal work of American culture,” says John Kennedy ’82, who conducted the opera’s December performances and 2022 world premiere at the Spoleto Festival USA. “To me it’s an iconic piece, like Appalachian Spring by Aaron Copland and Martha Graham. I think Omar has very quickly risen to that kind of stature and will be seen that way in the decades to come.”
Unlike the Spoleto premiere, the Oberlin performances of Omar were “concert opera” performances, which focus attention on the musical elements by removing or limiting other theatrical trappings of traditional opera like blocking and sets. For example, the video projections of Arabic writing that accompany a full production were condensed to a single video screen in Finney.
Clockwise from top left: 1. Rhiannon Giddens ’00 watches a rehearsal of Omar in Finney Chapel.
2. Daniel Okulitch ’99 and Limmie Pulliam ’98 practice one of their many scenes together.
Current students and alums performed together in Omar; from left: Amelia Reines ’27, DaQuan Williams ’20, and Michael Preacely ’01.
These kinds of productions have become more common at different opera companies in the post-pandemic years for both aesthetic and budgetary reasons.
At the rehearsal, instrument cases lined the chapel pews, and tech workers in headsets milled about the aisles to check equipment and sound levels for the concert live stream. Kennedy directed without a baton in a dark buttondown and glasses, pausing only occasionally with a furrowed brow to tighten a rhythm or adjust balance.
“What’s so incredible about Omar is that even during the first readings, you could see the recognition on these musicians’ faces and hear in their playing that they knew how special this piece of music is,” Kennedy says.
The conductor wasn’t the only alum with longstanding ties to the production. Principal cast members included Giddens portraying Julie, an enslaved woman who befriends Omar and implores him to write about his
life; tenor Limmie Pulliam ’98 singing as Omar himself; baritone Michael Preacely ’01, portraying both Omar’s brother Abdul and the slave Abe, the latter separated from his son at auction; and bassbaritone Daniel Okulitch ’99 singing as both of Omar’s slave owners, first the vicious, detestable Johnson and later the gentler, more pious Owen.
Omar represented a full-circle moment: A quarter-century ago, Giddens, Pulliam, Preacely, and Okulitch trained together at Oberlin, attending workshops and studio classes and performing alongside one another in the conservatory’s opera productions and scene classes.
Their careers have taken off in the years since, but they have stayed in touch, and Giddens invited them to be a part of Omar at various stages. She originally wrote the roles of the opera’s two slave owners specifically for Okulitch; Pulliam, meanwhile, was part of the opera’s early workshops.
“I’m a big ‘Oberlin mafia’ person,” says Giddens, a North Carolina native who has won two Grammys and a MacArthur “Genius Grant” in addition to her Pulitzer Prize. “There’s so many of us who are doing interesting things and thinking about the world in really interesting ways, and so I’m quite happy to keep dipping in the Oberlin pool.”
OMAR’S JOURNEY
THE IDEA FOR OMAR ORIGINATED in conversations around 2015 at the Spoleto Festival USA. Kennedy, who was music director there from 2010 to 2022, and the festival engaged Giddens to craft the opera. (As it turns out, Kennedy’s introduction to Giddens was in this very magazine, via a blurb about her and her group the Carolina Chocolate Drops.) She adapted the libretto herself before bringing in Abels, who scored Jordan Peele’s Get Out, to help orchestrate.
The opera’s first scene takes place in Omar’s village in Futa Tora (modernday Senegal), where enslavers capture Omar and kill his mother. The story follows Omar’s journey on a slave ship, his auction at the Charleston slave market, and his escape from an abusive plantation owner. Omar is later bought by another plantation owner; in turn, he gives Omar a Bible and attempts to
At the December performances, Pulliam portrayed Omar with sensitivity and deep reverence, showcasing a supple, clarion tenor.
Ca rnegie Hall debut in 2023 with the Oberlin Orchestra and Oberlin choruses, portraying the title role in The Ordering of Moses. At the December performances, Pulliam portrayed Omar with sensitivity and deep reverence, showcasing a supple, clarion tenor. Especially poignant were his onstage interactions with Giddens, who sang with tender determination as Julie. Pulliam cites as the opera’s emotional cornerstone a scene in which Julie has found Omar’s Kufi, a brimless cap worn by Muslim men.
and Broadway productions in the U.S. and internationally, including in an acclaimed European tour of Porgy and Bess. “It’s very rare that I don’t encounter an Obie when I’m on a gig,” Preacely says, noting that he, Pulliam, and Okulitch all trained in the same studio while at Oberlin
convert him to Christianity. Later, Omar prays to Allah for understanding, and his mother’s spirit encourages him to write of his experiences and his faith.
Pulliam, a Missouri native who sang as Omar in a chamber adaptation at the Ojai Music Festival, made his
“Julie tells Omar, ‘My daddy wore a cap like yours,’” Pulliam says. “It was at that moment that Omar realizes that he isn’t alone and that Julie truly understands who he is [and] what his religion is, because her father is also a Muslim. And at the end of her aria, she presents him back with his head cover, and this solidifies their connection.”
Preacely, who calls Pulliam his “big brother” and sang alongside him at the Ojai Music Festival adaptation of Omar, has built a career singing a variety of roles in operas, orchestral concerts,
Even though Okulitch did not participate in Omar ’s 2022 premiere for scheduling reasons, he did perform in the San Francisco Opera’s 2023 production and has kept in touch with Giddens and the other vocalists since graduating from Oberlin. Like Pulliam and Preacely, Okulitch has amassed numerous performances with opera companies around the world and several high-profile world premieres, including Charles Wuorinen’s Brokeback Mountain with Teatro Real of Madrid.
The singers’ connections are part of what made the Oberlin production so meaningful. “Dan and I were roommates for a year, and Rhiannon is like a sister to all of us,” says Pulliam. “We have a builtin rapport with each other that I think
allowed us to be even more vulnerable as an artist on stage, to go places emotionally and musically that we might not have in other situations.”
While back on campus, Giddens, Okulitch, and Pulliam visited the Stevenson Dining Hall for old times’ sake. “Rhiannon looked around and goes, ‘Did we really look this young?’” says Pulliam, chuckling. “I said, ‘No, of course we didn’t!’ But obviously we probably did.”
AN AMERICAN OPERA
3.
DURING THE DRESS REHEARSAL, vocalist Daniel McGrew ’15 tiptoed through the shadows, avoiding creaking floorboards when not singing on stage. “I play a fairly barbarous character,” McGrew says of his role as the slave auctioneer. “He’s kind of the adversarial presence. You kind of go to a different place for a role like this, where you can’t let all the heart-wrenching stuff that’s going on get to you in the moment.” Since graduating from Oberlin, McGrew has earned degrees at Yale University and the University of Michigan and now concentrates on a combination of early music, opera, and musical theater.
As a younger alum in the production, McGrew describes the experience of joining Omar ’s long-connected cast as “slightly intimidating” but adds that the other cast members “couldn’t have been more warm and inviting” at the first rehearsal. “The Oberlin experience is a kind of kinship, even for people who may have studied at different times,” McGrew says. “That’s one of the special things about my time there. Oberlin provided space and time for a really thorough investigation into the literature and true collaboration among disciplines.”
Each singer involved in the production acknowledged the opera’s importance as a work of art and as a work of cultural history. “It’s truly a story that needs to be told about our American journey,” says Preacely. Giddens agreed, acknowledging Oberlin’s role in introducing Omar to audiences on campus and in Cleveland.
“This is what really good allyship from institutions looks like,” she says. “Oberlin really wanted to tell Omar’s story, and they wanted the school’s students and people in Cleveland to have exposure to the story, and not because of any kind of performative bull. I think it’s really important to call it out when it happens.”
In the wake of the Oberlin performances, the opera field’s interest in Omar continues to mount. There’s nothing yet officially announced, but each singer hinted at additional engagements in their respective roles at additional companies in future seasons. But its resonance at Oberlin was special.
“For all his flaws, [former Oberlin College President Charles] Finney was a famous abolitionist, and to have Omar performed in that chapel was incredible,” Kennedy says. Adds Okulitch: “I’ve been back to Oberlin before for recitals or masterclasses, but this time just felt different. I don’t know how else to put it. I felt a deep appreciation for the time that I spent here [as a student]. That was why it was really nice to be here with people who I’ve been here with, because we could all talk about that and share our feelings about being back. It was really wonderful.”
Jeremy Reynolds ’15 is the classical music critic and fine arts reporter at the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the editor of Opera America Magazine.
Clockwise from top left: 1. Limmie Pulliam ‘98 and conductor John Kennedy ’82 (background) during the December 6 performance of Omar.
2. Daniel Okulitch ‘99 and Daniel McGrew ’15 perform together in Omar
The cast takes a bow in front of a sold-out Finney Chapel.
4. Multiple choirs joined the orchestra in Omar
Class Notes
1940s
1947
Doris J. (Naugle) Olney turned 100 in June 2024 and “is still going strong,” daughter Susan writes. “She loves to walk and to arrange flowers and also takes care of my two dogs, Bucky and Wiggles.”
1948
Sarah (Sally) Gamble Epstein’s husband, Don, shared that Sally “began observing her 100th year” after turning 99 on Halloween 2024; the couple also celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary. “She was curious to know how many of her classmates were still alive and what their names and addresses were so she could make contact,” he adds.
OBERLIN’S RADIO STATION WOBC celebrates 75 years of college and community radio this year. Former WOBC jazz director and public affairs director Judy Finn Harris ’84 (pictured) is one of many WOBC volunteers whose careers in radio, audio, and music began here.
Contact Don at dcoll28416@aol.com if you fit this description.
1950s
1953
John D. Elder and Anne (Cartmell) Elder celebrated their 70th wedding anniversary over the weekend of July 27-28, 2024. They were joined at Seneca Lake in New York’s Finger Lakes region by 65 of their children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces, nephews,
OBERLIN COLLEGE ARCHIVES
Olney ’47
cousins, and their spouses for two days of food, fun, and music. Included in the gathering were fellow Obies Mia Brito ’24, Bennett Elder ’25, Mark Elder ’78, Kevin Murphy ’76, Susy (Elder) Murphy ’78, Kirsten Speidel ’86, and Karen Wilfrid ’09
1955
Honorary trustee Robert I. Rotberg coedited a new book, Grand Corruption: Curbing Kleptocracy Globally (Routledge), that “examines the nature, causes, and consequences of grand corruption, showing how it can be assessed, measured, and attacked from within and without.”
1956
Anne Dinsmore Phillips notes that Victoria Davis ’15 sang the role of the Archangel in Bending Towards the Light:A Jazz Nativity in December 2024 at St. Paul and St. Andrew United Methodist Church in New York City.
1957
Eleanor (Ellie) Hall writes in with news about herself and classmates Janet Holmes Carper and Marjorie Sumner Torrell, French House residents who became good friends. “After graduating, we mainly lost touch with each other,” Eleanor says. “Now we are taking advantage of modern technology and have formed an email group. We reminisce about Oberlin and report on our lives since Oberlin and what we are doing currently.”
After graduation, Janet spent two years as English assistant at a school in France before earning a master’s degree at Brown University. She spent six years as French editor at Holt, Rinehart & Winston, where she met Tom Carper, who was recordings editor there; the couple married in 1964 and moved to Cornish, Maine. “Tom joined the English department at the University of Southern Maine, and I taught high school French,” Janet says. “For many years, we spent
summers in our 14th-century stone house in the Loire Valley, France. Tom died in 2021. It’s a whole different world without him.”
Eleanor earned a doctorate in psychology from the University of Chicago, “something I never anticipated doing when at Oberlin,” she says. “Most of my work has been in research, on minority university student retention [and] on teenagers’ attitudes towards rape.” Later, for an economic consulting company, Eleanor conducted research for the U.S. Postal Service. “In 2000, I foresaw the loss of the large amount of business first-class mail that was diverted to electronic billing and payment,” she notes. Eleanor also cofounded the current version of a genealogy organization, the Scottish Prisoners of War Society (spows.org), and is currently living in Chicago and active on climate issues.
About a year after college graduation, Marjorie was married and entered library school. “For 40 years I worked in public libraries, with a cherished detour into medical library work,” she notes. “I am the matriarch of a fourgeneration family. My love of nature is expressed in gardening and raising black swallowtail butterflies.”
1958
Nien Lung Liu Tai, daughter of Yu Wan “Wellington” Liu, Class of 1917, held a family piano concert in Newton, Mass. She performed works by Bach, Debussy, Schubert, and Handel and invited three generations of her Obie family to contribute musical offerings on the piano, violin, and cello. The family ensemble included her three daughters (including Hao-Li Tai Loh ’85), grandson Nicholas Loh ’14, and granddaughter-in-law Yue Qiu ’14
1960s
1962
In June 2024, composer Margaret Brouwer released Rhapsodies, an album of never-before-recorded orchestral masterworks performed by the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Marin Alsop. The five works span 24 years and encapsulate a wide range of expression, from sparkling sonorities to virtuosic challenges and beautiful evocations of nature.
Harper’s Chelsea 534 hosted an exhibition of Alice Dalton Brown’s
paintings called The Contemplative View January 16 through March 1.
1966
Marianne Barcellona’s exhibition NorthScapes, described as “a collection of quirky and occasionally disquiet ing seascape/landscape collages and paintings that reflect the artist’s inner responses to today’s climate of uncertainty and upheaval,” was on
display in the First Street Gallery in New York City in spring 2024.
1970s
1970
The newly published third edition of Stewart Edelstein’s book How to Succeed as a Trial Lawyer (American Bar Association) supplements prior editions by adding guidance about topics like the effective and ethical use of artificial intelligence. Stewart is also the author or presenter of more than 80 seminars, podcasts, webinars, and articles for trial lawyers. Recent books include The COVID-19 Zeitgeist: Fifty Essays (2020) and An Alphabetical Romp Through the Flora of Berkshire Botanical Garden, from Agave to Zinnia (2022). A weekly columnist for the Berkshire Eagle writing about words in the news, he lives in Stockbridge, Mass., with his wife, Lynn. “Since retiring, I have taught at weekly squash clinics, presented adult-ed courses on etymology, served on local nonprofit boards, and continue to enjoy playing
the French horn in local ensembles, including Berkshire Winds, a woodwind quintet.”
Susan E. Thompson, curator of the Morris Steinert Collection of Musical Instruments at Yale University, recently published Resounding Brass: Conch Shells to Silver Trumpets (Yale Printing and Publishing Services), a book about the evolution of brass instruments as viewed through objects in Yale University’s and privately held collections. Curatorial intern Will Riley Robbins ’12 contributed to the project.
Carol Yorkievitz published her memoir, The Thin Ice of Reality (All Things That Matter Press). Written under the pseudonym Libby Peyton, it is the story of her decades-long odyssey through schizophrenia.
1972
Richard Gold, Misha Cohen ’73, and Henry McCann ’95 were together at the Pacific Symposium, a Chinese medicine and acupuncture conference in San Diego in fall 2024.
Rolf Wicks recently published the book Summer Skies, The Road Ahead. “The story is a fictionalized version of actual events involving students and graduates of Oberlin—fictionalized because memory 20 years after my sophomore summer was not complete,” Rolf says. “The story is about an actual hitchhiking adventure from Oberlin to Alaska and back that Kathy Lewis and I took, partly because we both had relatives there in Alaska.”
Edith Clowes published Shredding the Map: Imagined Geographies of Revolutionary Russia, 1914–1922
Tai ’58
Edelstein ’70
(Amherst College Press), which “investigates Russian place consciousness in the decade between the start of World War I and the end of the Russian Civil War,” notes the publisher. “Drawing from a large digital database of period literature, Shredding the Map investigates the metamorphic changes in how Russians related to places—whether abstractions like ‘country’ or concrete spaces of borders, fronts, and edgelands—during these years.”
1975
Kathy Greeley published her second book on her experiences as a public school teacher. Testing Education: A Teacher’s Memoir (University of Massachusetts Press) describes the before and after of corporate-style education reforms like No Child Left Behind from a teacher’s point of view.
1976
Slate ’s “War Stories” columnist Fred Kaplan has published a novel—his seventh book and first work of fiction— called A Capital Calamity, a satire-thriller about a cynical defense consultant who accidentally triggers war with China and has to figure out how to stop it.
On September 7, 2024, Frankie Mann opened the Issue Project Room fall season with a concert at the First Unitarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn, N.Y. She performed her new work Descent for soundscapes and traditional acoustic and electronic instruments with David Behrman, John King, and Sarah Hennies and presented Songs 3+3 with interdisciplinary artist Allison Easter. Stream the concert at: https://issueprojectroom.org/archive.
Randall Vemer ’s second documentary, Boots on the Ground for Art, which recounts his experience teaching 18 military veterans oil painting, has won in film festivals around the world and is currently on exhibit at the Veterans
Memorial Museum in Washington. Randall is continuing his cycle of classical musician paintings, this time a series titled “Violinist in Gold.”
1977
Liz Tingley published a memoir, Leaping Past Zinnias: Madness, Murder, Marriage and Me (IPBooks), the story of her marriage to Richard Laudor, whose brother killed his pregnant fiancée. Married three months after the tragedy, Liz, a clinical psychologist, details how she survived and thrived in the aftermath. “It also shows healing from both sides of the couch from early childhood trauma, subsequent depression, and the challenge of the tragedy,” she says.
John Wiecking shares a “fortuitous encounter in the Rhineland”— specifically, the Klais Orgelbau in Bonn, Germany—that he thought Obies might appreciate. “I fell into conversation with a woman named Marcia who now lived in an obscure village in the Cantal département (France). I soon learned that we had both worked at the American Embassy in Paris, though at different times—and that she was none other than Marcia Grant, who taught government at Oberlin in the 1970s and early ’80s before moving on to a career in international education. In my junior year she introduced me to the study of international relations, leading to a career in the State Department. As word spread of this extraordinary coincidence, another Oberlin alum identified himself: Robert (Bob) G. Seeman ’65.”
1978
Ken Amster retired after a 42-year career at the Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, Calif., as a defense analyst. He celebrated by wandering around Europe for six weeks with his family. He now hopes to spend his time writing, hiking, and enjoying time with his wife and grown kids.
1979
Eric Breslin, a partner at the law firm Duane Morris, was a recipient of the 10th annual Duane Morris Pro Bono Leadership Award. Since 2014, Eric has donated more than 3,000 pro bono hours to indigent defendants, prisoners, and wrongly accused individuals and provided mentoring and first-chair trial experience to numerous associates. Presently, Eric is working with the Civil Rights and Restoration Project at Northeastern School of Law and Northeastern law professor Margaret Burnham to obtain a posthumous pardon for a man wrongly sentenced to death under Jim Crow-era sentencing laws.
Leonard Garrison’s Gaston Crunelle and Flute Playing in Twentieth-Century France (Oxford University Press) profiles “a remarkable flutist and a beloved teacher” by “revealing details of musical life in France,” including Crunelle’s tenure as professor of flute at the Paris Conservatory from 1941 to 1969.
Steven Griffing published a new book of colored pencil geometric drawings, Mirror Paintings and Early Starts (Vol. 3), that reflects his Oberlin major— mathematics. “Most of the drawings are
Breslin ’79
designed to be able to be painted on a 12-inch-square mirror or mirrors in the shape of a golden rectangle, a root-two rectangle, or a root-five rectangle,” he says, noting most of the artwork dates from 2022 through 2024.
James Morrison recently published Comedy in Literature and Popular Culture: From Aristophanes to Saturday Night Live (Routledge).
Mark Tappan is now an emeritus professor of education at Colby College, where he taught for 31 years. He and his partner, Lyn Mikel Brown, retired and moved to Portland, Maine. They are enjoying city life and spending time with their new granddaughter, Ruby Bennett Saner-Brown. Mark and Lyn live around the corner from their daughter’s best friend from high school, Treva deMaynadier ’17.
1980s
1980
Jonathan Dinman, a professor in the cell biology and molecular genetics department at the University of Maryland, College Park, was named director of the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research.
Hazzan Abbe Lyons is interim director of the cantorial program and chair of the Hazzanut department for the ordination program of ALEPH: Alliance for Jewish Renewal. Previously she was assistant director of the cantorial program and remains chair of the liturgy department and a member of the ordination program’s Academic Va’ad.
Laurie Schneider is the author of Gittel (Fitzroy Books), an upper-middle-grade novel set in a small Jewish agricultural colony in central Wisconsin. Based on the author’s family history, Gittel tells the story of 13-year-old Gittel
Borenstein and her family, survivors of a deadly pogrom, who start over as farmers in Wisconsin. Pitched as Fiddler on the Roof-meetsLittle House on the Prairie, the book prompted author Sarah Aronson to call Gittel “a moving coming-of-age story of family, friendship, feminism, and finding your own voice.”
1981
Laurie Gutmann received the West Virginia University School of Medicine Distinguished Alumnus Award for 2024. Her sister Joan Gutmann Roberts ’77 was present at the ceremony with other family and friends. Laurie has been chair of neurology and codirector of the Neuroscience Institute at Indiana University School of Medicine for the past four years. She has found some Oberlin alums in Indy, including Diane Evans ’77, and would love to hear from old friends.
1982
After retiring from the National Science Foundation in December 2023, Michelle Bushey spent six months in Northampton, Mass., before buying a home in Granby, Mass. Michelle also shares that the Saturday night Tank poker game is alive and well at her house. In November 2024, Michael Docter ’82, David Greene ’82, Becca Leopold ’81, Ned Markosian ’83, Michael Massey ’83, and Lucia Miller ’82 gathered for
Lyons ’ 80
Searle ’ 83
a night of comfort food, poker, and reminiscing. Future gatherings are planned, and Michelle says anyone interested in being included in a future game should reach out .
1983
Elizabeth Searle cowrote a feature film, I’ll Show You Mine, released last year in select theaters and now available on demand via Amazon Prime, Peacock, and other streaming services. The film was well-reviewed in the New York Times and elsewhere. Elizabeth is also the author of five books of fiction and the playwright of Tonya and Nancy: The Rock Opera, which drew national media attention. She’s been married for 40 years to John Hodgkinson ’82 , who is a lead software developer at Wolters Kluwer Health, and the couple have a son named Will. Visit www. elizabethsearle.net for more.
Claire Siverson, Lisa Plotkin, and Ann (Warner) Anderson ’84 had a fabulous reunion in September in Jamestown, R.I., where Ann lives. They have all kept in touch, but this was the first time they were all together in 14 years. Lisa and Claire traveled from their homes in Hershey, Pa., and Vallejo, Calif., respectively.
1984
Ann Elliot Artz writes in with an update: “After a long career as a graphic designer and a mom tending to young ones, I have finally been able to return to art making. I also work as an art coach.”
Ann was in a group show at the Carmel Art Association in Carmel, Calif. See her work at annartz.com.
Jeffrey Lependorf ’s latest opera, American Terror, is a musical translation of the 1969 Firing Line TV show debate between William F. Buckley Jr. and Noam Chomsky on America’s involvement in Vietnam. The work, which received a New York State Council on the Arts individual artist
commission, premiered as a work-inprocess performance at Hudson Hall at the historic Hudson Opera House in Hudson, N.Y.
Jane Segadelli has retired as a full professor at Nassau Community College in Garden City, N.Y. She received a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence for her work at the college; this included counseling, teaching at-risk youth, and running the annual Women’s Center
symposium—a role in which she met icons like Gloria Steinem. For many years, Jane also served as a judge in a regional affiliate of the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. A clinical psychologist since 1992, she is now in practice part time and is finding more time for travel.
1986
Norman Birnbach co-wrote a book, Stealing Time (Linden Tree Press), with Tilia Klebenov Jacobs ’88. The timetravel jewelry heist—featuring teenagers Tori and Bobby, who live in different eras but “have to join forces to save a legendary diamond at the heart of all their troubles”—received a Claymore Top Pick at the 2024 Killer Nashville International Writers’ Conference. “Tilia and I worked together on a single article for the Oberlin Review,” Norman notes, “and then reconnected only in 2020 at the start of the pandemic.”
Jordan Brown, a learning experience designer at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, is featured in his company’s “Day in the Life” profile. Jordan finds many ways to integrate humor into the material
Lependorf ’ 84
Siverson ’ 83
Why I Stay Involved with Oberlin
IN THE YEARS SINCE GRADUATING FROM OBERLIN, I’ve been involved with the college in many ways. I became the first alumni class president—a role I held two or three times overall—and was a class agent a few times. Later, I wanted to do more to support Oberlin, and I joined the Alumni Leadership Council. Today, here I am writing to you; the rest is history.
Why do I stay involved with Oberlin?
Growing up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, not much happened. It was just a quiet little town. But coming to Oberlin, where so many things were going on every day, was eye-opening. I’m a person who likes to be involved; I want to be where the action is.
So when I was a student, I was involved with as much as I could on campus. I joined WOBC, where I did news; a show between 5 and 7 p.m. called Dinner Date; and classical. I also joined the Oberlin Review, where I wrote news stories and was the second in command for a couple semesters. And I ran for Student Senate and was elected.
My grades were not as terrific as they should have been because I was too busy doing these things, plus having a boyfriend. But by the time I graduated, it became part of my psyche to be somewhere where things are going on. I realized that we all have this unsurpassed base of knowledge and experience with Obies. You can talk to them in certain ways that you can’t with other people. So I thought, “I want to maintain this connection because it’s been so much a part of me.”
These feelings remain strong today as I continue to visit campus and stay involved. For a small example, in February, I attended a Zoom program with three students plus Chris Jenkins, the conservatory’s associate dean for academic support, talking about their Winter Term experiences with alumni. The Alumni Leadership Council also recently heard a student panel. Both were a testament to how amazing Obies are now, as they have always been.
Listening to these magnificent students talk about the things that mean something to them—their career choices, what they did for Winter Term, or what gives them joy in these tough times—was outstanding. It occurred to me that current students are like how I was: They want to be involved at Oberlin and be in the middle of things. They want to make a difference and have their voices heard. Find ways to support them—scholarships, internships, career choices—because they want to be involved with alumni, and we can do so much for them!
jan weintraub cobb ’71 President, Oberlin Alumni Association
he creates for students and teachers; for example, when asked about his background, he mentions that he graduated from college with a degree in the interdisciplinary study of humor. In this profile, he also shared his passions for long-distance running, baking cookies and mailing them to loved ones, and writing letters to celebrities he admires, as well as a poem, “I Taught My Dog to Write a Poem.”
Christopher Grotke has released a fivesong solo EP, OH NO. “Some funky and funny grooves of resistance,” he notes. It’s a musical side project to his day job of digital design, animation, and web design at MuseArts in southern Vermont. Stream and download: xoxoxopher. bandcamp.com/album/oh-no.
Dan Mendelson was appointed to the advisory board of the Peterson Center on Healthcare, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making higher-quality healthcare more affordable for all Americans. Dan has served as CEO of Morgan Health at JPMorgan Chase since 2021 and previously founded the advisory services firm Avalere Health. He was also associate director for health at the Office of Management and Budget in the Clinton White House.
1987
Nicole (Boyer) Barnett is the incoming president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Northern California. In this role, which begins July 1, she will oversee an affiliate with 17 health centers that serve 20 of California’s northern counties, from San Francisco to the Oregon border. As president and CEO, she will further the mission of the organization and her personal commitment to reproductive justice and social justice in all forms.
Chris Brokaw ’86 played a house concert in November 2024 in the living room of Ranjit Dighe and Anne Pagano in Oswego, N.Y. Jack Christin ’88 and John Charles ’87 spontaneously purchased “house concert scholarship” tickets for a few locals, while Garrett Swearingen ’87 also attended. “Playing acoustic and electric guitars, Brokaw wowed the crowd with songs from his solo albums and band projects,” Ranjit writes, noting it was the third of what he and Anne hope “will be many house concerts to come.”
1988
David and Jenny Heitler-Klevans
released a new album, Let the Light In, in 2024. Most of the songs on the album are originals (and many have social justice themes), but one of the two covers is by Amanda Udis-Kessler David and Jenny’s twin sons, Ari ’17 and Jason ’17, also sing on the album, alongside Billy Jonas ’87, Mariah Leontopoulou-Cochran ’23, and Bruce and Linda Pollack-Johnson.
1989
Karla Schickele performed at a multigenre concert she helped organize in memory of her father, composer Peter Schickele. She and Garry Kvistad ’71 cohosted the evening, which was held at Maverick Concerts in Woodstock, N.Y.
1990s
1990
Alissa Pearson shares that in December 2024, Geoffrey Hudson ’89 discussed one of his Oberlin professors, the late professor of composition Richard Hoffmann, at an event in Vienna, Austria. Alissa and Geoffrey are also the artistic directors of the
nonprofit Hybrid Vigor Music.
Professor and award-winning journalist Lisa A. Phillips ’ newest book, First Love: Guiding Teens Through Relationships and Heartbreak (Rowman & Littlefield), chronicles the challenges today’s adolescents face as they navigate crushes, dating, and breakups—and the challenges adults face as they strive to provide guidance and support.
1992
Nkeiru Okoye was one of 25 composers commissioned by BBC Radio 3 to write a new piece that “reflects on an event which happened in each year of the first quarter of the 21st century.” Nkeiru’s piece, “And the People Celebrated,” premiered in January 2025 and commemorated the 2008 election of the first Black U.S. President, Barack Obama.
Patricia Saleeby shares that both Physiopedia and Washington University recognized her ongoing scholarship around disability rights. Patricia collaborated with the World Health Organization on the development of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health (ICF). This measurement of how health conditions affect daily lives was endorsed by the United Nations in 2001 and subsequently adopted by many countries. “I continue to serve on several WHO international working committees in official capacity as a delegate of the United States Collaborating Center,” she shares.
1994
Twenty-five years after earning a chemistry degree from Oberlin, Helen Blackwell, the Norman C. Craig Professor of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, celebrated that her first Oberlin grad advisee at Wisconsin, Emma Eisenbraun ’19, earned a doctorate in chemistry in November 2024. Helen named her professorship after Oberlin professor
Brown ’ 86
Norm Craig ’53 due to his impact on her career as a scientist.
Stephan Farber shares a photo of himself with Jennifer Koh ’97 (opposite page) after the latter’s December 2024 performance at Carnegie Hall—the 25th anniversary of her debut at the storied venue.
1995
Little Wing Lee won a 2025 National Design Award for interior design. In 2019, she started Studio & Projects, an interior design practice that’s worked with major cultural institutions, commercial environments, and public and private hospitality spaces; recent projects include the National Black Theatre in Harlem. She also founded the nonprofit Black Folks in Design, whose mission is to bring awareness to and promote the cultural contributions, excellence, and importance of Black designers.
1996
From July 2024 to June 2025, Marni Raab is performing as Madame Giry in t he international tour of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Phantom of the Opera. Marni has also performed as the musical’s main character Christine
Daaé on Broadway—in fact, she’s the fourth-longest-running Christine there—as well as on the national and international tours, totaling over 3,000 performances.
Alicia Swords published a new sociology textbook, Social Change: Movements, Politics, and Technology (Sage Publications).
1997
Molly Barth, Tony Arnold ’89, Stuart Gerber ’96, and Sean Dowgray ’13 collaborated on the Indianapolis premiere of Lexia: An AI Opera, which focuses on climate catastrophe. The opera had a subsequent performance at Roulette in Brooklyn, N.Y.
Johan Awang Othman wrote the libretto and music for the contemporary Malay opera Malam Takdir, which is based on the Mahabharata and depicts
Bergman ’ 98
Soble ’18
a conversation between the Blind King and his attendant about preventing an impending war. Malam Takdir won Best Ensemble/Group Performance, Best Lighting Design, Best Music & Sound Design, and Best of 2023 (Malaysia) at the 2024 BOH Cameronian Arts Awards.
1998
After 25 years as a member of the Minnesota Orchestra, Sam Bergman moved to rural New Hampshire to take a position as executive director of the Apple Hill Center for Chamber Music. The 54-year-old organization, built around a philosophy of radical hospitality and acceptance, brings together people of diverse ages, genders, races, economic backgrounds, and nationalities for a series of summer chamber music workshops. “We also have an outstanding string quartet in residence year-round,” Sam says. “The quartet includes my Oberlin classmates violinist Elise Kuder ’97 and violist Mike Kelley ’96!”
After a career in law, Rachel Coen retrained as a psychotherapist and launched a private practice serving adults, teens, and couples in California, with a special focus on LGBTQIA+, trans, and neurodivergent folks, as well as people with disabilities and chronic health conditions. She notes she is “passionate about supporting these communities” and is committed to bringing “a feminist, psychodynamic lens to the work.” Rachel and her husband, Timothy Henrich ’96, live in the San Francisco East Bay with their two amazing teens and two cats.
In March 2025, Wayne Miller released a new book of poems, The End of Childhood (Milkweed Editions), which he deemed his “most personal book” to date in his writing career. “I wrote much of The End of Childhood while spending time with my kids during the pandemic, which kept me thinking about my own childhood in the context of theirs,” Wayne notes.
“More generally, the book is also about how our domestic, private lives both do and don’t come into regular contact with the larger socio-historical narratives of our moment.”
1999
Jon Riccio recently published a chapbook, The Orchid in Lieu of a Horse (Seven Kitchens Press).
2000s
2000
William Alexander has two books forthcoming in 2025: Starstuff (MIT Kids Press), an anthology of science fiction stories for young readers, and Sunward (Saga Press), a science fiction novel about the perils of raising young robots in the distant future.
Abigail Harkey writes that she joined the Denver Public Schools sustainability department as a program manager for sustainability education after a 20-plus-year career in arts education. The district “is emerging as a national
leader in sustainability based on our student-initiated climate action plan,” Abigail says. “Students were awarded the President’s Environmental Youth Award for this and recognized in a visit from Kamala Harris to congratulate our district on our commitment to climate action.”
Les Délices, which features Debra Nagy MM’02 and Associate Professor of Harpsichord Mark Edwards, released a new CD, The Poet & the Prodigy. The album explores the intriguing relationship between two musical giants, J.S. Bach and François Couperin, while celebrating the artistic collaborative partnership of Debra and Mark. Buy the CD now at lesdelices.org.
Huang Ruo was appointed composer in residence of the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra for a three-year tenure beginning in fall 2025. During his residency, the chamber orchestra will present some of his existing works, including the gripping climate crisis symphony Tipping Point. In addition, Huang will compose a new chamber symphony for the orchestra.
Farber ’94
On October 26, 2024, David Tamarkin and Brian Ulicky ’04 were married on a rooftop in Cincinnati. The service was officiated by Lauren Viera ’00 and attended by many more Obies. Also in attendance: Dana Adipietro, Sarah Freeman, Rumaan Alam ’99, Aviva Meyerowitz, and Seth Fruiterman.
2001
After graduating, Lawrence Zhang earned a doctorate in history and East Asian languages at Harvard. His first book, Power for a Price: The Purchase of Official Appointments in Qing China (Harvard University Asia Center, 2022), received an honorable mention for the Joseph Levenson Book Prize for the Association for Asian Studies in the pre1900 category.
2002
Kurt Beals recently published a new translation of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front
(W.W. Norton). Kurt also has three more translations coming in 2025, including the paperback version and Norton Critical Edition of Hermann Hesse’s The Steppenwolf and Jenny Erpenbeck’s Things that Disappear (New Directions).
Rebecca Ducore received board certification in toxicology from the American Board of Toxicology in the fall of 2024 and continues to support preclinical efficacy and safety assessments as a senior pathologist at Inotiv Inc.
2003
Jane Vorburger is enjoying working as a life coach and career transition guide for artists, athletes, and the general public through Rise Above Coaching. In addition to working in the transformation coaching field, she is completing a degree in counseling at Southwestern Oklahoma State University.
2005
Ori Fienberg has released a full-length debut collection of prose poems, Where
Babies Come From (Cornerstone Press). The Chicago Review of Books called it a “dazzling and eccentric meditation on the anxieties that cling to us” and “a remarkable collection with heart, a sense of humor, and plenty of punch.”
He was a scholar at the 2024 Yetzirah Jewish Poetry Conference, and his writing is forthcoming in the Cimarron Review, Smartish Pace, and Ploughshares Ploughshares published Ori’s “April is the cruelest month, except all the ones before it” in the Winter 2024-25 issue, edited by John Skoyles.
Publishers Weekly awarded a starred review to Kay Healy ’s graphic novel series, while Kirkus Reviews called it “comedy gold.”
The first book in the series, Casey’s Cases: The Mysterious New Girl (Neal Porter Books / Holiday House), was published in February.
In October 2024, Mike McComb was a contestant on Jeopardy! Although he did well in categories involving wordplay and travel and gave an excellent impression of Robert De Niro in a film question, two missed Daily Doubles prevented Mike from winning his game.
2006
The Winchendon Music Festival relaunched in September 2024 and included a clavichord performance from John McKean, a harpsichordist and musicologist based in Boston who serves on the faculty of the Longy School of Music of Bard College.
2008
Topher Soltys married Matt Adams in October 2024. Emily Miranker, Meg Lindsey, Shawn Roggenkamp, Becca Saines, and George Saines celebrated with them.
Barth ’97
2010s
2012
Eli Goldberg is “delighted to be done with his medical training!” He finished his family medicine residency at the University of Vermont in 2023 and then spent 2023-24 in Boston as the inaugural Harvard-Fenway LGBTQIA+ Health Fellow. Eli has now joined Brattleboro Memorial Hospital, where he practices comprehensive primary care with a particular focus on LGBTQ+ health. He and his husband, Nick, live in Putney, Vt.
Historically informed violinist Augusta McKay Lodge shares the good news that she’s joined the roster of artists of Suono Artist Management, a boutique agency representing acts such as the Jasper String Quartet and the Byrd Ensemble
2013
Kat Vokes was the composer for Yang Yongliang’s video installation Five Dragons, which was on display at the Allen Memorial Art Museum in fall 2024.
2015
Izzy Esler and Greg Solow ’10 were married at the Lantern Room in Cleveland on August 31, 2024. Izzy and Greg originally met through the Oberlin fencing team and now live in Cleveland with their dog. In attendance at the wedding were many other Oberlin friends, including Ricardo Barrios ’12, Alex Edwards ’12, Emily Gazda ’12, Nick Loh ’13, Kit Plumb ’10, Yue Qiu ’13, Cecelia Scheeler, Kevin Sloan ’16, Gena Reynolds, and Leah Wood ’16.
2016
In April 2024, Quinn Donover married Payne McMillan in Lancaster, Pa. They have chosen a new last name that represents their new intertwined life: Vermillion. Obies in attendance
included: Luke Burns, Justin Chen ’11, Rabbi Rachel Davidson ’15, Arthur Davis , Sandra Donover ’88, Scott Donover ’87, Jamie Firman, Persephone Harrington, Natalie Hartog ’17, Jo Martin, Sasha Mitts ’15, Carol O’Donoghue ’89, Elana Pontecorvo ’15, Jeannie Quinn ’88, Emanne Saleh ’15, Emma Schneider ’10, Adrian Singleton ’15, Beth Zimmerman ’88, Jeff Zimmerman ’89, and Iona Schneider-Davis (prospective ’46)
2017
Dana Kurzer-Yashin and Andrea Allen were married in Mount Tremper, N.Y., in August 2024. Multiple Obies were in attendance, including Noé Mina, Dana Colihan, Keenen Willis, Ellie Tremayne, Emily Heck, Jessie Smit, Maddie Batzli, Abby Cali, Beth Minahan, and Olivia Menzer.
2018
Anah Soble Botràn and Miguel Botràn were married on September 22, 2024, at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Mich. Many Oberlin grads were present for the celebration, including Cormac Close, Thomas Valle-Hoag ’19, Scott Lerner, CJ Blair, Alex Fox, Kate Van Pelt, Claudia Baker ’19, Frances Purcell, Emma Nash, Sofia Moscovitz, Yael Reichler ’19, Lexy Jabbour, Hannah Rodgers, Laurel Wolfzinger, and El Wilson.
2020s
2020
Liam Kaplan has been appointed the pianist of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra. He studied piano with Alvin Chow and composition with Stephen Hartke at Oberlin and has received various awards and recognition since graduation, including winning the 2019 Aspen Music Festival and School’s Piano Concerto Competition. Liam has also released two
2021
Adeline Foster was recognized as Faculty Member of the Month for the Euclid (Ohio) City School District. “Adeline’s selflessness and genuine commitment to understanding and educating every child make her an invaluable asset to the school,” the district said.
2022
Antonina DiValentin was the costume designer for Kitty James and Destiny’s Trail to Oregon, which opened in February 2025 at the Factory Theater in Chicago.
2023
Caroline Morehouse, a research fellow at the National Institutes of Health, coauthored the paper “Do Caregivers Value the New Antiamyloid Treatments for Alzheimer’s Disease More than HomeBased Care?” for The American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry.
2024
Rae Pung released her debut album, Piano Sonatas, which received favorable reviews and appeared on Spotify’s Classical New Releases playlist. Rae is now studying in Italy at Accademia Pianistica di Imola.
Class Notes are prepared from a variety of sources but are drawn mainly from personal and professional news submitted by college and conservatory alums. What makes a good class note? When you’re proud to share something, we want to hear about it! You can now submit your class note via email (alum.mag@oberlin.edu) or online: go.oberlin.edu/ submit-class-notes
Acceptable image file formats for print are JPGs and TIFFs. Please note that due to space and design considerations, we are unable to publish every photo or image submitted. solo albums and served as a member of the Aspen Contemporary Ensemble.
Losses
Alumni
U.S. Navy V-12 Training Program
John K. Gooch
April 13, 2023
1943
Jean Wilson Chandler
December 23, 2024
1946
Thornton Milton
April 20, 2020
1948
Anna Knelle Stormer
December 16, 2024
1949
Jean Van Tuyl Elliott
December 18, 2024
1950
Ben Mercer
January 2, 2025
1952
Robert Rexford
Chamberlain
April 12, 2024
Berthaida Fairbanks
May 19, 2024
John Haeussler
September 6, 2024
Reed Howald
November 30, 2024
William (Bill) Moyer
December 18, 2024
Susan Helen
Schatzki Skinner
January 15, 2025
1955
Louise Fowler
No date given
1957
Alice Ann (Kroc) Hattemer
January 2025
Martha Bicking Nagy
October 25, 2024
1959
Carmine Campione
January 2, 2018
Samuel Farlow
February 18, 2017
1960
David White
September 25, 2024
1963
Dale Bardo
September 1, 2024
Richard Railsback
December 13, 2024
1964
John Andrus
March 9, 2021
Gerald Lancz
May 17, 2020
Marie Link
October 7, 2019
Patricia Myers
August 2022
1965
Peggy (Bierer) Shapera
November 15, 2024
1967
Alan Buster
November 29, 2024
Roberta Dew Conant
April 29, 2024
1971
Douglas R. Everhart
December 8, 2024
1976
Arthurie Lemise Buraimoh
May 21, 2024
Mark M. Stein
September 6, 2024
1977
Richard MacPhail
October 2, 2024
Miriam Seaver
December 7, 2023
1982
Lou Ann Shafer
July 12, 2024
1994
Anne Owen Jackson
October 14, 2024
Faculty, Staff, and Friends
Joe Elder ’51
Instructor, sociology department (1959-61)
January 2025
Carl Gerber ’58
President of the Oberlin Alumni Association (1971-72); chair of the Allen Memorial Art Museum Visiting Committee (20082024); Alumni Medal winner (2008)
*Please note this list represents losses that have been reported to OAM between December 12, 2024, and February 12, 2025. Any losses received after that will appear in a future issue.
Our alumni have asked Oberlin to share news of classmates passing in a more timely way, a request that can’t often be accommodated in OAM , which publishes three times a year. We now add submitted death notices to an OAM webpage at www.oberlin.edu/alumni/losses that will link to online obituaries published by a newspaper, funeral home, or legacy website. This offers readers a more timely announcement and a more complete picture of the lives and accomplishments of our deceased community members. Please submit death notices by emailing alum.mag@oberlin.edu with “Losses” in the subject line and a link to a published online obituary or a letter confirming the date of death and the class year of the deceased. You can also mail a printed obituary to Oberlin Alumni Magazine , 247 W. Lorain St., Suite C, Oberlin, OH 44074.
A Shared Commitment
Ted Nowick is an artist whose work includes large-scale ceramic sculptures and kinetic mobiles, while Robert Taylor has worked as a journalist, a military intelligence officer, a magazine editor, and an author. They met in 1975 at one of Washington D.C.’s first Gay Pride Day celebrations and have been together ever since.
Drawn by Oberlin’s artistic and intellectual richness, Ted and Robert moved to Kendal at Oberlin in 2003. Since then, they have contributed to the Oberlin community in various ways; among other things, Robert has served as president of the Friends of the Oberlin College Libraries, and as the chair of the Allen Memorial Art Museum Visiting Committee.
Over the last two decades, Ted and Robert have been generous donors to Oberlin. Their philanthropic donations have underwritten current operations, supported special projects in the libraries and the museum, and created an endowed scholarship fund. Ted and Robert have also included a gift in their estate plan to create an endowment for Special Collections within the Libraries.
Most recently, they have made a significant commitment to permanently fund the creation of a new staff position, the NowickTaylor Deputy Director of the Allen Memorial Art Museum, to support and expand the museum’s artistic and academic mission. This gift celebrates their names and their commitment to Oberlin together in perpetuity.
We are so grateful to donors like Ted and Robert. If you would like to talk about making a planned gift to Oberlin, contact our Office of Leadership and Planned Giving at 440-775-8599 or gift. planning@oberlin.edu.
Endquotes
“Jazz, or the music I make, is much more open-minded, because the other places I go and spend a lot of time and play music, jazz is a very broad term and generally just means Black music. Like in China, to them, jazz is Michael Jackson, Stevie Wonder, Miles Davis, Coltrane — all of that is jazz to them. It’s not as constricted of a definition as it tends to be in America, where it’s like, ‘Oh, if it’s not purist, it’s not jazz.’”
Theo Croker ’07, discussing his forthcoming album Dream Manifest in the Los Angeles Times
“A major standout in the cast is Georgia Heers as Ella, the jazz singer who sings all the songs used in the show. Her voice is clear and velvety, and her stage presence is absolutely captivating. … She manages to tell a story through song that you can’t look away from.”
Georgia Heers ’21, who earned rave reviews in the Daily Free Press, the student newspaper at Boston University, for her Broadway debut in Good Night, and Good Luck
“I was always interested in something to do with creativity. In my junior year at Oberlin, I took a class that really resonated with me. It was a class that’s now called Optimization, my specialty. I realized at the time that there’s a mathematical field that aligns well with the way I think.”
James F. Clark Professor of Mathematics Bob Bosch ’85, talking about his passion for mathematics and art in the Oberlin Review
“I came back to college and almost immediately got a call. They said, ‘Our original managing editor had to leave, so we’re sort of in this sudden lurch where we need somebody to step in and be managing editor.’ I was like, ‘Well, this is the job I went to college to get,’ so I dropped out with about two years left and moved to San Francisco.”
Andrew Leland ’03, on how a Winter Term internship at McSweeney’s led to him becoming managing editor of The Believer
“I just became someone who was really obsessed with reading. I went from being someone who read five to 10 books a year to someone who read 50 or 60 books a year. And I think I hit a point where I had read so many novels that I thought maybe I should try to do it myself.”
Sophie Kemp ’18, speaking to the Daily Gazette about her debut novel, 2025’s Paradise Logic
“However I started playing, I’m still doing it. I’m still doing exactly what I did, what—60 years ago?”
Oberlin Conservatory Associate Professor of Jazz Studies and drummer Billy Hart, who was named a Mellon Foundation 2025 Jazz Legacies Fellow, quoted in the New York Times
“I don’t particularly like compliments. … That level of scrutiny does not make me feel powerful. It does not make me feel, like, I’ll show you. What makes me feel powerful is making my work. It’s the only thing I want to do. It is my only love in life aside from the people who are closest to me and my pets and books.”
Actor, director, and writer Lena Dunham ’08, interviewed in the New Yorker
“There’s a deep responsibility we have as costume designers that goes far beyond the clothes and the character. It’s really about two humans learning about each other and supporting each other.”
