News from IDSVA President, George Smith

Bill Brown served as this year’s Visiting Faculty at IDSVA’s New York Winter Residency in New York. In addition to working with first and second-year students, he gave a public lecture on “The Time of Painting” at the Morgan Library. Considered one of the world’s preeminent critics of contemporary visual culture, Bill Brown is Karla Scherer Distinguished Service Professor in American Culture Professor at University of Chicago and Co-editor of Critical Inquiry.

This year’s Visiting Faculty at the Spannocchia Castle Summer Residency for first-year students will be Peggy Phalen, Ann O’Day Maples Chair in the Arts; Professor of Drama and English at Stanford University. Peggy is the author of Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (1993) and co-authored Art and Feminism (Themes & Movements) with Helena Reckitt (2012).

Starting in summer 2012, second-year students will start their summer residency in Berlin. IDSVA Visiting Faculty Howard Caygill, author of A Kant Dictionary and currently professor of Visual Culture, Paris 8, will lead the Kant/Hegel seminar intensive. In addition to seminar discussions on the Kant/Hegel divide, students will conduct field work in metropolitan Berlin, focusing on architectural and cultural history as well as the contemporary art scene, currently one of the hottest in the world.

Following the Berlin residency, second-year students fly to Paris. There they will meet up with first-year students, to do field work at the d’Orsay, the Pompidou, and the Louvre, etc.

Starting in Academic Year 2013/14, IDSVA second-year students will do their January residencies in Havana.

On the institutional front, it is worth repeating that IDSVA received Candidacy Status for Accreditation in December and received eligibility for Federally Guaranteed Student Loans in April. These two developments mark huge strides for IDSVA, as we continue to educate leadership for the future.