Special Programs

Special Programs hosted during HFA Days will include undergraduate and graduate networking events, gallery visits, a walking tour of prominent architectural buildings, a music rehearsal, and more, reflecting work and art from each of the departments. 

Noble Fragments
Part of Shakespeare Unbound: A Campuswide Special Exhibit
Jan. 22 to May 10
Arthur F. Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies

This exhibit tells the story of the print revolution in Renaissance Europe and the emergence of the book in its modern form. The exhibit’s title derives from publications in the 1920s that marketed leaves from damaged and disbound copies of the Gutenberg Bible (1454-1455) and Shakespeare’s First Folio (1623), iconic artifacts in the history of printing, under the title A Noble Fragment. The “noble fragments” exhibited here remind us that books are unmade as well as made: they come apart over time, but they are also often reassembled and repurposed in ways that leave traces of that history on their pages. The exhibition concludes with a copy of Shakespeare’s Second Folio (1632), an important version of the most iconic gathering of “noble fragments” in English literature. Books are lively objects that connect us: to the books themselves, to ourselves, and to one another. Each of the books, leaves, and printed pages on display in this exhibit—scattered, fragmented, torn, eaten by mice, even scorched by a candle’s flame—invite us to reimagine the resilience of the printed word, never more fully in force than when it has been unbound.

Y3K: On Distant Keys
March 25 to April 26th 
Opening Reception: Tuesday, March 26, from 5-6 p.m.
Gallery Talk at 5:15 p.m.
Design Building Gallery, Olver Design Building

This exhibit explores the spatial possibilities for place-based consciousness and imagines a (not-so) distant future where landforms are recognized as sentient beings with legal rights and the ability to self-govern. Y3K portends the yet-to-be island of Ondacka, leading the planet as it enters the next millennia and new global consciousness through a curated selection of art, artifacts, maps, music, videos, and text.

Withdrawn
An MFA Thesis Exhibition by Dan Willig
On View: April 1-12
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 11, 4-6 p.m.
Herter Art Gallery
 
Dan Willig's MFA thesis exhibition, Withdrawn, explores the metamorphosis of the human psyche in the face of modernization and quietly invites viewers to contemplate their relationship with the complex nature of modern existence. 

Wallpapered: An Examination of Femininity
An exhibition of prints by Christina Fallon
On view: April 1 - 12, 2024
Opening Reception: Thursday, April 11, 4-6 p.m.
Herter Art Gallery 

Herter Art Gallery is delighted to present Wallpapered: An Examination of Femininity, an exhibition work by Christina Fallon, a BA graduating student in the Department of Art at the University of Massachusetts.

Christina Fallon's recent work explores the history of wallpaper through a feminist perspective. Inspired by Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story "The Yellow Wallpaper," Wallpapered: An Examination of Femininity focuses on the art of printmaking as a domestic form of communication. A feminist perspective is applied through themes of sisterhood, motherhood, and societal expectations placed upon women, past and present.

Christina Fallon, 22, is a visual artist who primarily works with printmaking mediums to explore themes of femininity, domestic life, and childhood. She was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in a northern suburb. Christina is now based in Amherst, MA, where she will be graduating from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in May 2024 with a Bachelor’s degree in Studio Art and a self-designed Bachelor’s degree in Arts Marketing. Coming from an Irish Catholic family, Christina attended Catholic school for the majority of her education, which often shapes her work. The women in her life, including mothers, sisters, and childhood friends, are her strongest sources of influence. She has favored silkscreen, intaglio, and photomechanical printmaking processes, often incorporating other mediums such as photography, painting, and charcoal. 

Juniper Literary Fest: The Writer’s Life
With Susan Straight and Edie Meidav
April 5, 2:30 p.m. 
Herter Hall, Room 231

Susan Straight’s recent novel Mecca, was published March 2022 by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, and released in paperback March 2023. Mecca was a national bestseller, a finalist for The Kirkus Prize, and named a best novel of the year by The Washington Post and NPR, as well as a Top Ten California Book by the New York Times, and winner of the Southwest Book of the Year for Fiction.

Juniper Literary Fest: Publishing in Today’s Market
With agent/editor Anjali Singh 
April 5, 3:30 p.m.
Herter Hall, Room 231 

Anjali Singh started her career in publishing in 1996 as a literary scout. Best known for championing Persepolis, the breakaway graphic memoir about the Iranian revolution and exile by Marjane Satrapi, Singh is the former editorial director at Other Press, and has also worked as an editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Simon & Schuster, and Vintage Books.

Juniper Literary Fest: MFA Visiting Faculty Reading
With Hannah Brooks-Motl & Bianca Stone
April 5, 6 p.m.
Herter Hall, Room 231 

Hannah Brooks-Motl ’13MFA is the author of the poetry collections The New Years (2014), M (2015), and Earth (2019). Bianca Stone is the author of the poetry collections What is Otherwise Infinite (Tin House, 2022) which won the 2023 Vermont Book Award in Poetry; The Möbius Strip Club of Grief (Tin House, 2018), Someone Else’s Wedding Vows (Octopus Books and Tin House, 2014) and collaborated with Anne Carson on the illuminated version of Antigonick (New Directions, 2012).

Juniper Literary Fest: LiveLit
April 5, 4-5:30 p.m.
South College Atrium

LiveLit is a monthly reading series organized by graduate students in the MFA for Poets and Writers in the English Department. Each reading features one prose writer and one poet from each cohort, and provides a space for writers and poets in the MFA to share their work. 

Juniper Literary Fest: Writer & Editor Chat
With Sarah Ghazal Ali & Carey Salerno of Alice James Books
April 6, 3:30 p.m.
Commonwealth Honors College Events Hall

Sarah Ghazal Ali ’21MFA is the author of THEOPHANIES (Alice James Books, 2024), selected as the Editors' Choice for the 2022 Alice James Award. A 2022 Djanikian Scholar and winner of The Sewanee Review Poetry Prize, her poems appear in POETRY, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Pleiades, The Yale Review, Poem-a-Day, Guernica, Best New Poets, and elsewhere.

Carey Salerno serves as the executive director and publisher of Alice James Books where she has been dedicated to broadening the spectrum of the American poetic voice since 2008.

Juniper Literary Fest: MFA Alumni Reading
With Sarah Ghazal Ali ’21MFA, Eric Baus ’05MFA, Yvette Lisa Ndlovu ’23MFA, and Susan Straight ’84MFA
April 6, 6 p.m.
Commonwealth Honors College Events Hall 

Join us for a reading by four MFA alumni as they read from their literary works.

Building Bridges As We Walk: A Latinx Theater Symposium
April 8, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Curtain Theater and New Africa House

The Department of Theater will host a collaborative symposium, “Building Bridges As We Walk: A Latinx Theater Symposium,” on April 8 in locations across campus to highlight and celebrate a broad and diverse range of perspectives on Latinx/Latine theater and performance. This event is free and open to the community, but registration is limited to 75 people. Register here.  

Curated by Priscilla Maria Page and Elisa Gonzales, assistant professors of theater, the symposium celebrates the recent release of "The Routledge Companion to Latine Theatre and Performance," a landmark anthology edited by theater scholars Noe Montez and Olga Sanchez Saltveit and featuring essays by Page and Gonzales. The symposium will bring together many of the anthology’s contributors—as well as theater students, scholar, and practitioners—for talks, panels, and excerpted readings of plays. 

Awakening
April 9, 4:30-7 p.m.
Design Building Atrium

4:30 p.m. — Waking Up: A Jazz Performance by Eric Hofbauer / The Five Agents, based on the young climate activist Greta Thunberg delivered a speech at the UN Summit for Climate Action, in which she declared, “How dare you!” This will be accompanied by a dance performance by UMass Amherst Jazz Dance class taught by Lauren Cox.

5:30­ p.m. — Ripple Effects: Reflections on Water in Story and Sound. Part of the multi-year arts and humanities project Elements with Evan MacCarthy and Marjorie Rubright from The Renaissance of the Earth

6 p.m. – Landscape of Fear, Saxophone performance with Jonathan Hulting-Cohen 

6:30 p.m. – Ghost Ensemble, performance with Ben Richter

HFA Undergraduate Internship and Research Reflections
April 11, 1-2:30 p.m.
Bromery Center for the Arts, Lobby

Undergraduate internships and research opportunities open doors to professional worlds. Come hear HFA students share reflections on their experiences.

Rehearsal: Jazz Ensemble I 
April 11, 2:30-4:30 p.m.
Bromery Center for the Arts, Frederick C. Tillis Performance Hall

Join Jeff Holmes, professor of music and director of Jazz and African American Music Studies, for a rehearsal of Jazz Ensemble I in Tillis Performance Hall. This award-winning Big Band has gained national and international recognition including top honors at major collegiate jazz festivals and conferences, and ensemble, individual performing, and writing citations from Downbeat Magazine's Annual Student Music Awards. Guest jazz artists commonly are featured with this ensemble. Strings, winds and percussion augment Jazz Ensemble I to form the Studio Orchestra, seven times named Best Collegiate Studio Orchestra and three times Best Blues/Pop/Rock Ensemble by Downbeat. Faculty and student works are performed prominently along with significant historic repertoire.

Public Art Talk and Discussion
April 11, 1-3:45 p.m.
240 Studio Arts Building

Join the Department of Art for an art talk and discussion with professors and artists Kiran Jandu, Mike Medeiros, Jeffrey Kasper, and more.

Rehearsal: Twelfth Night
by William Shakespeare
directed by Milan Dragicevich
April 11, 7 p.m.
Bromery Center for the Arts, Rand Theater

We invite you to join us for the Design Run Rehearsal of Twelfth Night, the Elizabethan festival of epiphany, when the world is turned upside down in a long night of revelry that takes players and audience alike on a journey through the heights and depths of the human emotional experience. Space is limited and reservations made by emailing agoossen [at] umass [dot] edu.

Architecture Master's Thesis Poster Session
April 12, 9-11 a.m.
Design Building Atrium

This event will showcase work from our Masters of Architecture students of their thesis projects. The work will be displayed as a poster session, representing nine months of work on their thesis in the leadup to the final review. Students and their committees will be present discussing the work. This work showcases the range of projects and questions posed by our graduate cohort in their last year of the masters program.

Art Student Art Sale
April 12, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Studio Arts Building, Lee Edwards Gallery (1st floor) and atrium (2nd floor)

The Department of Art presents its first student artwork sales to support their endeavors. All proceeds will go directly to students. Student artworks – ceramics, prints, photographs, drawings, and paintings – will be available for sale. Students will attend a portion of the event with their contact info posted. If interested in purchasing, please get in touch with students directly. 

Rehearsal: Wind Ensemble
April 12, 10 a.m. to noon
Bromery Center for the Arts, Room 36

Director of Wind Studies and department chair Matthew Westgate conducts a rehearsal of the Wind Ensemble in rehearsal room 36 of the Music Wing. The Wind Ensemble performs major works in twentieth-century wind literature. The group regularly commissions and premieres new works and has recorded the wind music of David Maslanka and Charles Bestor on the Albany and Centaur CD labels and was recently invited to perform at Music Educators National Conference and College Band Directors conferences in Connecticut, New Jersey, and the Washington, D.C., home of the U.S. Marine Band.

Emerging Choreographers: Integrative Experience Dance Rehearsal
April 12, 11:30 a.m. to 2:15 p.m.
Totman, Rooms 202/204

Emerging Choreographers rehearse and do class work preparation for the Junior Choreography Project dance performances in May.

HFA Graduate Careers Beyond the Academy Networking Event
April 12, 1-2:30 p.m.
Bromery Center for the Arts, Lobby

Graduate degrees lead in many directions, more often than not outside the academy. Join HFA alums for conversation around a variety of career paths.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 40th Anniversary Shell-ebration
April 12, 2-5 p.m.
W.E.B. Du Bois Library, FL 2 Recess

Join the Libraries, HFA, and the Craft Center in celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, co-created by alumnus Peter Laird '76! Stop by this drop-in event to make your own zines and comics, and pick up some fun TMNT-inspired giveaways. Plus, check out our social media leading up to the event and the May anniversary month, where we'll be highlighting student artwork.

Understanding UMass Amherst’s Brutalist Heritage
April 12, 3 p.m.
Meet in the Bromery Fine Art Center’s lobby 
Led by Timothy M. Rohan, associate professor and chair, Department of the History of Art & Architecture, CHFA, and co-founder of UMass Brut, the advocacy group for Brutalist architecture in the UMass system

Join Professor Tim Rohan for a walking tour of UMass's Brutalist architectural heritage. Conceived in 1962 as part of a new campus masterplan, Brutalism was embraced as an architectural expression of modernism and the university's new image as a leading destination for higher education in the nation.

LiveLit
April 12, 4-5:30 p.m.
South College Atrium

LiveLit is a monthly reading series organized by graduate students in the MFA for Poets and Writers in the English Department. Each reading features one prose writer and one poet from each cohort, and provides a space for writers and poets in the MFA to share their work.