Arts and Culture

Middle school students at the Tuscarora Indian School in the Niagara-Wheatfield School District have been working since late September to produce "Skarooran Journey: A Tuscaroran Adventure," an educational journey that explores aspects of the history, language and culture of these ancient eastern woodlands people through a student-designed, multimedia, CD-ROM program.

African Americans in Western New York and beyond are coming together to pay homage to unheralded black women of the past 100 years, the unsung heroines whose legacy of self-determination speaks to a tradition of effecting change. "Uncrowned Queens" -- a Web site dedicated to recognizing those unsung heroines -- spotlights the accomplishments of African-American women who live or have lived in the Buffalo area.

Cort Lippe appears in his formal photographs to be the serious-minded composer he is -- a leading figure in the international electro-acoustic music community. He is an assistant professor and director of the Lejaren Hiller Computer Music Studios in the Department of Music at the University at Buffalo, an international nerve center for composition and research in the field of interactive computer music. That, however, is just part of his story.

A collection of memorabilia and autographs commemorating African-American history is on display in the University at Buffalo's Lockwood Library in celebration of Black History Month.

A University at Buffalo staff member has been honored by the Polish American Historical Association for her new book, which looks at how Polish Americans have creatively adapted the rural peasant folklore of the old country to become a thriving contemporary part of multicultural, urban America.

Minglu Gao is an artist, art historian, curator and author who was born and bred in the political and cultural tumult of late 20th-century China. Political circumstances sent him off to spend his teen-aged years herding cattle in Mongolia and later propelled him into the explosive Chinese art movement of the 1980s. Today he is a noted curator and assistant professor of art history at the University at Buffalo.

In a move that bolsters both institutions, Kerry Grant, dean of the University at Buffalo's College of Arts and Sciences, today announced the appointment of Vincent O'Neill, founder and artistic director of the Irish Classical Theater Company (ICTC), as chair of the UB Department of Theatre and Dance.

The University at Buffalo next spring will offer a unique "service-learning"-abroad program, one in which college students and non-students alike will live and work for one month in Hanoi, Vietnam's capital and second-largest city.

For more than a century, New York's Lower East Side has been home to hundreds of thousands of working-class and poor immigrants from across the globe. In his new book, a University at Buffalo sociologist examines the peculiar phenomenon in which real-estate developers and city officials exploit images of social difference as a means to lure middle-class renters to the historic district.

The life and character of composer Franz Schubert have been variously sketched in treacle and brimstone by biographers. But a critically acclaimed new biography by a University at Buffalo Schubert scholar presents a far more balanced and empathetic portrait of the man and his career.