Athens, Ga. — University of Georgia graduate students Beth Fadeley and Theresa Chafin won the second-annual 4 minutes, 33 seconds: Spotlight on Scholarship competition presented by the UGA Arts Council as part of the Spotlight on the Arts festival.
The competition, created last year, was inspired by John Cage’s landmark 1952 composition 4’33” and showcases the work of graduate students in visual art, music, creative writing and theatre and film studies. During the competition, which was held Nov. 5 at the UGA Fine Arts Building, graduate students had 4 minutes and 33 seconds to describe their research in a concise way for a non-specialist audience. Fadeley and Chafin each received a $433 prize.
“When I introduced 4’33” to our enthusiastic audience this year, I stressed that we would be joining our graduate students in the arts as ‘they inquired into the nature of things,’” said William Eiland, director of the Georgia Museum of Art and a member of the UGA Arts Council, who emceed the event. “Their presentations did just that and illustrated why UGA is a great research university. The UGA Arts Council and I congratulate our speakers, who showed the whole community that significant scholarship in theater, visual arts, music and creative writing distinguishes these disciplines on our campus.”
Fadeley, a doctoral candidate in art history in the Lamar Dodd School of Art, was chosen as the winner out of 11 students by a panel of judges, which included Nicholas Allen, director of the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts and Franklin Professor of English, Suzanne Barbour, dean of the Graduate School, and Meg Amstutz, associate provost for academic programs.
Fadeley’s presentation, “The Empire at Home: Paintings of the Domestic Interior in the Age of U.S. Global Expansion, 1876-1915,” examined the relationship between domestic paintings and American imperialism. She received a bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a master’s degree in art history from the University of South Carolina.
Chafin, a doctoral candidate in musicology in the Hugh Hodgson School of Music, was selected as the audience favorite for her research in children’s opera and the PBS program “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” She received a bachelor’s degree in voice and piano from Brewton-Parker College in Mount Vernon, Georgia, and a master’s degree from Northwestern University in music theory.
During the event, the Arts Council recognized Uma Nagendra, a doctoral student in the plant biology department who won the national 2014 Dance Your Ph.D. Contest. Nagendra won a $1,000 prize for the artistic explanation of her research on the impact of tornadoes on forest soil ecology.
The fourth annual Spotlight on the Arts festival, sponsored by the UGA Arts Council, was held Nov. 5-14. The festival featured more than 60 events celebrating the visual, literary and performing arts. For more information or for arts events year-round, see www.arts.uga.edu, and follow the Arts at UGA on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter.
