Spring sampler: Phish, earthquakes, and cryptocurrency
Spring at Skidmore is lecture central. Students are invited to feed their curiosity outside the classroom, exploring a number of subjects both within and outside their areas of study.
This semester featured a stellar lineup of lectures, panels, and discussions, where academic experts and alumni delivered talks on a range of topics, from cryptocurrency to nuclear explosions, and also shared advice with Skidmore students.
“Making digital currency safe for democracy”
Adirondack Trust Co. Lecture on Finance
Christopher Giancarlo ’81
J. Christopher Giancarlo ’81 spoke about his career journey from Skidmore student to chair of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. One of the leading figures in the field of financial regulation and author of “CryptoDad: The Fight for the future of money” (2021), Giancarlo discussed ways to ensure the future safety of the U.S. dollar.
Things sometimes come full circle: Giancarlo recalled opening his first checking account as a Skidmore student at Adirondack Trust Co., which generously endowed this lecture series.
“Smiling Pages: Visualizing Dante’s Divine Comedy”
Edwin M. Moseley Faculty Lectureship
Giuseppe Faustini
Professor of Italian Giuseppe Faustini watching his own lecture with the audience.
Sometimes we all need some help finding our voice.
Professor of Italian Giuseppe Faustini lost his voice just a few days before he was set to deliver the prestigious Edwin M. Moseley Faculty Lectureship. “The first thing I tell my students in class is find your voice. Well, as you can clearly hear tonight, I literally lost mine," he said.
Lead Instructional Technologist Ben Harwood, supported by Faustini’s daughter Franca and student assistant Henry Meade ’25, jumped into action. Using text-to-voice generative AI, Faustini delivered a one-of-a-kind lecture that exemplifies innovative thinking and community spirit. In his talk, the Skidmore professor showed how Dante’s pictorial creativity — a boundless “fountain of creativity” — inspired countless artists from the medieval period to today.
Entrepreneurial Artist Initiative Entrepreneurs’ Forum
Tobi Ewing ’15, Monica Steffey ’19, Natalie Wilson ’22, Jamel Mosely, and Brian Vergara ’24
From left: Brian Vergara ’24, Tobi Ewing ’15, Natalie Wilson ’22, Monica Steffey ’19, and Jamel Mosely
Artist, strategist, and wellness consultant Tobi Ewing ’15; brand specialist, visual storyteller, DJ, and entrepreneur Jamel Mosely; dancer and performance artist Monica Steff ’19; and musician and singer-songwriter Natalie Wilson ’22, described their career journeys in a panel moderated by Brian Labra Vergara ’24, a studio art major, management and business minor, and Skidmore’s first entrepreneurship minor. The program is part of Skidmore’s Entrepreneurial Artist Initiative, which aims to provide studio art students with the business skills needed to build a successful career around their passion for art making.
That panel is exactly what I want to do (in professional life): I want to be able to meet entrepreneurs. I want to be able to understand how they got to this point; to support their story; support their career; and just network — enjoy a world where creatives can come together and experience, not only their passion but the thrill of connecting to one another. I think that's phenomenal and that's exactly what I think entrepreneurship is like: being able to take hold of your own voice and support the voices of others.”Brian Labra Vergara ’24
“This is your song, too: Phish and contemporary Jewish identity”
Jacob Perlow Series
Oren Kroll-Zeldin '03 and Ariella Werden-Greenfield '04
Oren Kroll-Zeldin '03 and Ariella Werden-Greenfield '04 at Williamson Sports Center, where Phish performed in 1990.
Two members of the band “Phish” — bassist Mike Gordon and drummer Jonathan Fishman—
were raised in Jewish households. Oren Kroll-Zeldin '03, assistant director of the
Swig Program in Jewish Studies and Social Justice at the University of San Francisco,
and Ariella Werden-Greenfield '04, associate director of the Feinstein Center for
American Jewish History at Temple University, were both religious studies majors at
Skidmore.
Now, the pair are editors of the new book “This Is your song too: Phish and contemporary Jewish identity.” They describe Phish as one avenue through which many Jews find cultural and spiritual fulfillment outside the confines of traditional and institutional Jewish life.
“South Side Impresarios: How Race Women Transformed Chicago's Classical Music Scene”
Judy Tsou '75 Music Scholar Series
Samantha Ege
Combining lecture and piano performance, Anniversary Research Fellow at the University of Southampton, musicologist, and pianist Samantha Ege brought the story of the South Side impresarios to life, as she delved into the ways that Chicago's early 20th-century Race women — Black women intellectuals and creatives committed to the entwined tasks of racial uplift and gendered progress — operated out of their South Side base and shaped a new vision for classical music. The event included a live performance of “Piano Sonata in E minor” by Florence Price.
“Searching for America’s First Black Woman Novelist”
Gregg Hecimovich, Tammy C. Owens, and Jamie Luis Parra
From left, Gregg Hecimovich, Jamie Luis Parra, and Tammy C. Owens
When the eminent Harvard University historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. announced the discovery of the earliest known novel by an African American woman in 2001 and published it the following year as “The Bondwoman’s Narrative,” some scholars questioned whether the manuscript was really written by an enslaved woman. Following years of painstaking research, Gregg Hecimovich’s “The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of the Bondwoman’s Narrative,” offers detailed evidence of the life of Hannah Bond “Crafts,” her escape from North Carolina in 1857 to New Jersey, and the experiences that shaped her autobiographical novel.
Gregg Hecimovich, Hutchins Family Fellow at Harvard University and professor of English at Furman University, was in conversation with Assistant Professor of American Studies Tammy C. Owens and Assistant Professor of English Jamie Luis Parra.
“Earthquake or Explosion? History and future of geophysical nuclear explosion monitoring”
Lester W. Strock Lecture in Geosciences
Michael Cleveland ’06
There’s a science to understanding things that go boom.
When the earth shakes, scientists are interested in what happened. Was it an earthquake, chemical explosion, collapsing mine — or was it a nuclear explosion? That’s where nuclear explosion signatures come in.
As geophysics deputy group leader of the National Security Earth Science Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory, Michael Cleveland '06, works to understand how explosions produce seismic waves, how those waves travel through the earth, and how they differ from waves produced by earthquakes.
