I'm reminded again this Spring that the School of Arts and Humanities continues to be a vibrant, exciting home for faculty, students, and staff to produce the extraordinary.  Outstanding plays in Theater and performances by students and faculty in Dance have matched our Music Department concerts in their excellence. Two outstanding exhibitions in the Art Gallery-one of faculty work and another that opens this week, our juried student exhibition-attest to the robust activity in the visual arts.  Several significant lectures, readings, and other events have occurred, or will happen this semester:  of especial note are the lectures in the Africana Lecture Series and those arranged through the Center for Ethics, Law, and Society (CELS), both of which are featured below in more detail. 

Our faculty's work will be featured once again in the Arts & Humanities Faculty Scholarship and Creative Work Recognition event, coming up in the next few weeks.   I'm never more proud of being Dean than when I review our colleagues' reports of theirs and their students' achievements, publications, classroom successes, and other involvement in their professional communities.  Their work, and their commitment to that work, in the classroom and outside of it, is very impressive indeed; not only are they publishing and performing, but they are producing significant, important work, recognized as distinguished far beyond the borders of our campus.  Here is a representative sample, far from exhaustive:  Gillian Conoley's latest collection of poems, Peace, has been named a "Stand Out Collection of 2014 by the Academy of American Poets" and is a finalist for the 2015 Los Angeles Times Book Prizes.  Michael Ezra will oversee as editor in chief the release of the first issue of a new journal, produced at SSU and published by the University of Illinois Press, the Journal of Civil and Human Rights.   Two of our students, Mary-Madison Baldo and Alex Bretow, will have two of their short films ("Snake Eyes" and "Rampage") screened at the Cannes Film Festival this May.  And finally, Trio Ariadne, the Weill Hall Artists in Residence who have worked closely with our Music Department and in Residential Life, are performing in their farewell concert on Sunday, March 29th with guests Frederica von Stade and the Argento Chamber Ensemble.  This concert will culminate two years of a residency in which Elizabeth Joy Roe, S?unn Thorsteinsdottir, and Carol McGonnell worked with students--music students and from across campus--to infuse music and the arts into our campus in innovative ways, helping integrate academics with performance, in Weill Hall, Schroeder Hall, and in classrooms across campus.