Thiel Happenings

Artist displays still life paintings and color studies at Thiel College gallery

Edinboro University of Pennsylvania professor and author Malcolm Christhilf is displaying his paintings "Form and Color" at Thiel College's Weyers-Sampson Gallery until Dec. 3.

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Thiel Tomcat Marching Pride hosts 137 high school musicians for halftime performance

The Thiel Tomcat Marching Pride hosted one of the largest contingents of high school musicians the event has had for its Fifth Annual Thiel Band Day on Saturday with 137 students representing more than 50 high schools and three states.

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Morgan, Percy Named Thiel College Students of the Month for November

Thiel College announces Steve Morgan, of Raritan, N.J., and Shayla Percy, of Lyndora, Pa. as students of the month for November 2014.

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Johnson presents on Faustus and Macbeth

Dr. Jared Johnson, Assistant Professor of English, delivered a talk at the 38th Annual Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference.

Themed “Lovers, Madmen, and Poets: Shakespeare and the Imaginary, Supernatural, and Divine,” the conference featured national and international speakers on a wide spectrum of topics in Shakespeare studies.

Johnson’s paper “’Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible / To feeling as to sight?’: Fetish, Fantasy, and Supernatural Spectacle in Doctor Faustus and Macbeth,“ examines these iconic plays in the context of contemporaneous discourses of inversion and idolatry made available to Shakespeare and Marlowe’s audiences through demonological tracts and pamphlet literature. Johnson contends that both plays employ the concept of “spiritual bondage,” an exchange that by definition complicates and obfuscates the subject, creating within each play epistemological uncertainty that becomes eclipsed by fetishistic fantasies of the supernatural.

The Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference is Johnson’s third conference presentation since he accepted a position at Thiel in 2012.

This year’s Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference was hosted by The Ohio State University on Oct. 24-25. For more details visit: http://blogs.uakron.edu/ovsconf/

Tomcat Tributes

Congratulations to the following Tomcat Tribute recipients. Employees can nominate co-workers for recognition in four categories (Random Act of Kindness, Going the Extra Mile, Had a Great Idea, Just Because). To nominate a fellow employee go to the Campus Resource link on the Thiel Hub.

Nomination comments may be condensed for space considerations to appear in campus publications.

Student News

Five Thiel College women participate in ATHENA Leadership program

Five Thiel College students were among the 12 women representing the four area post-secondary schools that participated in the Lawrence Mercer County ATHENA International’s second ATHENA Connections event Nov. 8 at Penn State Shenango in Sharon

The participants earned certificates of leadership achievement from ATHENA International. The session was facilitated by Lisa Reeves Bertin, Senior Instructor of Business and IST at Penn State Shenango.

Megan Ely, Kelsey Schneider, Clarissa Whippo, Kelsey Wise, and Juliana Ziroli represented Thiel College.

ATHENA Connections’ curriculum is based on the ATHENA Leadership Model – eight distinct principles of leadership that are reflective of women’s contributions to leadership. These principles serve as the building blocks for future success.    

The course is tailored for college juniors or seniors or students, who are learning about leadership and those already practicing leadership through their campus involvement. The participants were nominated by a faculty member, colleague, or staff member at the participant’s school.

The ATHENA International College Leadership Initiative is designed to prepare college women for leadership in higher education and beyond.

Thiel students present Shakespeare research at OSU

Four Thiel College students presented their original research in Shakespeare studies at the 38th Annual Ohio Valley Shakespeare Conference at The Ohio State University on Oct. 25.

Sean Oros, Austin Hall, Joe Disch, and Kendell Harrell presented papers to an audience of professors, graduate students, and undergraduate peers from institutions such as Harvard University, Georgia College and State University, the University of Tulsa, the University of Nevada-Las Vegas, and the National Changhua University of Education (Taiwan).

• Oros' paper "Roads to Rome in Shakespeare’s Writings" explores Shakespeare’s Coriolanus vis-à-vis the play’s Roman source material in order to separate fact from fiction. Oros argues that Shakespeare’s handling of Roman sources to create the character of Coriolanus reflects a desire to craft a character that conforms more to Aristotle’s concept of tragic hero and to the mythos of the Roman stoic made popular in Shakespeare’s time than to the actual historical figure of Coriolanus.
• Hall's essay “’Madness in great ones must not unwatched go’: A Contemporary Discourse on the Means, Motive and Madness in Almereyda’s Hamlet“ interprets the representation of “madness” in Michael Almereyda’s film version of Hamlet (2000). In contrast to early modern discourses of melancholy, Hall observes, Almereyda and lead actor Ethan Hawke project late 20th -/early 21st century pop-culture- and psychological sensibilities onto Hamlet’s madness, re-interpreting the character’s behavior as a gradual slide into the various stages of clinical depression.
• Disch delivered a talk on representations of morality and religion in Christopher Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta entitled “’This train he laid to have entrapped thy life’: Trust Issues Much?” In his paper, Disch theorizes trust as a concept that binds discourses of business, religion, and friendship together and investigates the social consequences of various breaches of trust in the play.
•  Harrell spoke on the influence of Hollywood stardom on iconic cinematic and televised performances of Shakespeare’s Richard III.  By applying auteur film theory to performances by Lawrence Olivier, Ian McKellan, Al Pacino, and, most recently, Kevin Spacey, Harrell discerns each actor’s interpretation of the character. Harrell’s argument closes with a discussion of Spacey’s performance of Frank Underwood in the Netflix series, House of Cards, as an adaptation of Shakespeare’s character.