Professors Marlo Belschner from Monmouth College and Sarah Kraaz from Ripon College have been appointed as visiting faculty for ACM off-campus programs in India and Italy in fall 2016.
Belschner, who teaches English and Women’s Studies, will work with students as they choose topics and begin work on their independent study projects on the India: Culture, Traditions, & Globalization program.
On the Florence: Arts, Humanities, & Culture program, Kraaz will integrate music with other disciplines, such as the visual arts, literature, and history, in a pair of courses that explore Florentine art and culture in the Renaissance and Baroque eras.
India Program students on a tour of Pune.
“As visiting faculty, Sarah Kraaz and Marlo Belschner bring expertise to complement the curricula on our programs and deepen our students’ off-campus study experiences,” said Joan Gillespie, ACM Vice President and Director of Off-Campus Study Programs. “At the same time, they will be using the resources at the program sites to enrich the courses they teach on their home campuses.”
“Both of them also have research agendas that they will be able to pursue at the program sites,” Gillespie added. “These are exactly the kinds of faculty development opportunities we hope to support with these visiting appointments.”
This will be the second time with the Florence Program for Kraaz. When she served as Affiliated Scholar in fall 2012, she sought out opportunities to engage students by connecting music with the visual arts. For example, she taught some of the students a chant that they sang during the program’s field trip to the Basilica of San Marco in Venice, and she collaborated with staff at the Galleria dell’Accademia in Florence to demonstrate historic keyboard instruments from the Musical Instrument Collection. Kraaz plans to repeat and expand on those activities when she returns in 2016.
Two years ago, Belschner traveled to Pune, India, on a Faculty Site Visit to learn about the ACM fall semester program, where she met with faculty, staff, and students and saw the program in action. The visit triggered her interest in applying to be Faculty Coordinator, particularly for the chance to engage with students and help them integrate their academic work and cultural immersion during orientation and, potentially, in their independent study projects.
Sarah Kraaz
Sarah Kraaz, Professor of Music and College Organist, Ripon College
- Affiliated Scholar, Florence: Arts, Humanities, & Culture, Fall 2016
- Ripon College faculty profile and bio on the ACM website
Sarah Kraaz will offer two courses among the program’s electives, with an emphasis on conducting class sessions on site throughout Florence.
- Music in Art: Hearing the Story in Florentine Art 1350-1700 will explore the multi-dimensionality of the arts and culture of Florence. Students will hear and learn about music of the Renaissance and Baroque eras that complements art of the same periods, and will study the ways in which music and musicians are portrayed in art (iconography) and learn to interpret the significance of musical depiction (iconology).
- Music Patronage and Power in Renaissance, Baroque, and Contemporary Florence will examine the historical relationship between music and music patronage – such as laudesi companies, the Church, and the Medicis – as well as the sources of funding for music and musicians in Florence today.
On a Florence Program field trip to the Musei Capitolini in Rome.
At Ripon, Kraaz teaches piano, organ, and harpsichord, music history classes, counterpoint, Women in Music, Topics in 20th-Century American Popular Music, and Music and War. For 25 years she directed the Ripon College Collegium Musicum, an early music group, and is an active performer on organ, piano, and harpsichord both in the U.S. and internationally, giving solo recitals and collaborative programs with singers.
In 2012, at the request of Florence Program colleague Gail Solberg, Kraaz embarked on a project to analyze a painting of the Madonna with Child and Angels by Taddeo di Bartolo. Her research into music iconography in the painting led to an article and presentation at the Southeast College Art Association (SECAC) in October, 2014. She plans to continue her iconological research next year in Florence among the paintings in the Galleria dell’Accademia, as well as her interest in locating, seeing, and playing historical organs in Tuscany.
Marlo Belschner
Marlo Belschner, Associate Professor of English, Monmouth College
- Faculty Coordinator, India: Culture, Traditions, & Globalization, Fall 2016
- Monmouth College faculty profile and bio on the ACM website
As Faculty Coordinator of the India Program, Marlo Belschner will be in residence in Pune during the early weeks of the program and participate in students’ orientation when they arrive. She will focus on supporting the students in the early stages of their independent study projects, teaching elements of research methodology to the students and working with ACM Program Director Sucheta Paranjpe and the research advisors in Pune who will mentor the students throughout the semester.
Marlo Belschner and a Monmouth College student participating in the ACM India Program.
A member of the Monmouth faculty since 2002, Belschner teaches a wide range of courses in English and Women’s Studies, including Shakespeare, Early Modern Women, Milton, Transnational Feminism, and Works of Toni Morrison. She is chair of the English Department and has served as coordinator of Monmouth’s Women’s Studies program and the first year experience program.
Her current research focus is on Mary Ward, the founder of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary. During her time in India next fall, Belschner plans look for opportunities to deepen her understanding of religious feminism and gender studies in India to support both her research and courses she teaches. She also will work on a research project she’s developing on Bollywood Shakespeare films, especially those produced in the past decade that engage and appropriate Shakespeare in profound ways.
Belschner has led groups of students on study trips to Cuba and Scotland, and has traveled widely in Europe and Latin America. This summer, she is spending time in Thailand with an ASIANetwork group, funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, to study women’s involvement in Buddhism.
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