Administration
Graduate Assistants
Advisory Board
Honorary
Administration
David Saltz
Executive Director
Professor, Theatre and Film Studies
David Saltz is a Professor of Theatre and Film Studies, and Executive Director of the UGA Arts Collaborative. He is a specialist in modernist theatre and performance, performance theory, the philosophy of art, and directing. His primary research focuses have been performance philosophy and the interaction between live performance and digital media. He was Principal Investigator of Virtual Vaudeville, a large-scale research project funded by the National Science Foundation to simulate a nineteenth century vaudeville performance on the computer. He has explored the use of computer technology extensively in his own work as a director and teacher. Along those lines he established the Interactive Performance Laboratory at UGA, has directed a series of productions incorporating real-time interactive digital media, and has created interactive sculptural installations that have been exhibited nationally. He is co-director for the NEH Institute on Digital Technologies in Theatre and Performance Studies. His recent work focuses on robotic theatre. He is co-author (with Sarah Bay-Cheng and Jennifer Parker-Starbuck) of Performance and Media: Taxonomies for a Changing Field (University of Michigan Press, 2015), coeditor (with David Krasner) of the book Staging Philosophy: Intersections between Theatre, Performance and Philosophy (University of Michigan Press, 2006), and has published numerous articles in scholarly journals and books. Before coming to Georgia, Dr. Saltz taught at State University of New York at Stony Brook and The College of William and Mary.
Mark Callahan
Artistic Director
Faculty, School of Art
Associate Academic Director, Willson Center for Humanities and Arts
Mark Callahan is the Artistic Director of the UGA Arts Collaborative and serves on the faculty of the School of Art. He is a graduate of Cranbrook Academy of Art and Rhode Island School of Design, where he was a member of the European Honors Program in Rome, Italy. Callahan’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), Club Internet, MAMA: Showroom for Media and Moving Art in the Netherlands, the Telfair Museum in Savannah, Georgia, and used in concert by R.E.M. as a large-scale video projection. He was a co-principal investigator of “Enhancing imaginative and collaborative STEM capacity through creative inquiry,” an Innovations in Graduate Education project supported by the National Science Foundation. Callahan’s essay “The Broadest Possible Interpretation of Creativity” is included in Critique Is Creative by Liz Lerman and John Borstel (Wesleyan Press).
Graduate Assistants
Amir Akbarpour
Graduate Assistant in Interdisciplinary Arts Research
PhD Student, Theatre and Film Studies
Amir Akbarpour is a director, writer, actor, and researcher interested in performance and contemporary art. He was born in Shiraz, Iran, and graduated from Tehran University’s College of Fine Arts with a master’s degree in Theatre Directing.
Richie Arndorfer
Graduate Assistant in Interdisciplinary Arts Research
DMA Student, Music
Richie Arndorfer is a composer and multi-instrumentalist performer from the Midwest. His eclectic, playfully earnest style has found expression in works for band and orchestra, chamber opera, chamber ensemble, and short film, as well as in songs, various forms of electronic music, and more. He also taught music arranging, composition, and theory courses at Bowling Green State University as an adjunct instructor.
Samuel Horgan
Graduate Assistant in Interdisciplinary Arts Research
MFA Student, Art
Samuel Horgan is a sculptor, researcher, and new media artist working through American themes of dread, doom, ecstasy, and paranoia. Born and raised in Western Pennsylvania and a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, his practice draws on the concerns of community, history, ecology, and labor across an idiosyncratic variety of physical and performance media.
Cicely Osborne
Graduate Assistant in Interdisciplinary Arts Research
MFA Student, Theatre and Film Studies
Cicely Osborne is an interdisciplinary explorer with professional experience in Broadway, film, and television production. Her research engages the creative expression of human relationships and technology, including forms of digital abuse.
Maddy Underwood
Graduate Assistant in Interdisciplinary Arts Research
MFA Student, Art
Maddy Underwood is an artist, designer, reader, and craftsperson interested in collection and collaboration. Born in Nashville, TN, she graduated from Washington University with a BFA in Communication Design and has subsequently worked as a designer and printer with numerous recording artists and bands. Her work has been exhibited at the Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, Wisconsin, as well as various venues across Nashville.
Mateo Wojtczack
Graduate Assistant in Interdisciplinary Arts Research
DMA Student, Music
Mateo Wojtczack is a composer from Long Island, New York whose music is often described as playful, inquisitive, and whimsical. Mateo’s acoustic and electroacoustic works have been performed throughout the United States with ensembles including the Four Corners Ensemble, Splice Ensemble, and Tennessee Valley Music Festival Orchestra. They particularly enjoy composing for chamber ensembles, orchestra, and opera. In addition to composing, Mateo is interested in music theory and aural skills pedagogy. Most recently, they were a teaching assistant and adjunct instructor at Bowling Green State University.
Research Affiliate
Nkululeko Zungu
2024-2025 Research Affiliate
Nkululeko Zungu is a graduate candidate at UGA where his studies focus on contemporary writing styles in composition. He finds pleasure in exploring music from traditional Classical to modern Electronic and can be heard writing with the frame of mind, “Let me not, no, just add to the noise. Let me harmonize to the silence.” He collaborated with groundbreaking composers like Pulitzer Prize recipient Kate Soper, Dr. Ken Ueno, and saw contemporary ensembles perform his music, including the Wet Ink Ensemble. Nkululeko appreciates combining his writing practice with performing his works in unconventional settings, as seen in his performance at the Fort Collins Museum of Discovery’s Dome Theater and the Georgia Museum of Art. He has been described by Dr. Hendrik Hofmeyr, South Africa’s most performed Classical music composer, as “an artist who created from within combining all aspects of his life.” He prides himself on being a well-rounded artist.
Advisory Board
Anna Abraham
Advisory Board
Director, Torrance Center for Creativity and Talent Development
E. Paul Torrance Professor, Mary Frances Early College of Education
Anna Abraham is a cognitive psychologist and neuroscientist with over two decades of experience in the interdisciplinary study of creativity and other aspects of the human imagination including the reality-fiction distinction, mental time travel, self-referential and social cognition, and mental state reasoning. Her notable publications include the 2018 book, The Neuroscience of Creativity (Cambridge University Press), the edited volume, The Cambridge Handbook of the Imagination (2020), and The Creative Brain: Myths and Truths (2024, MIT Press). She is the Founding Editor of the Cambridge Elements in Creativity and Imagination, an innovative “short book” publication avenue.
Madeline Blankenship
Advisory Board
MBA Student, Art/Business Community Member
Madeline Blankenship earned her BA in Art History from UGA in 2015 and is currently a Master of Business Administration student at the Terry College of Business. For the past seven years, Madeline has worked to align art and business community stakeholders in Athens through her work in arts-based outreach, business-funded grant program management, and curated art shows and experiences. She has served as a member of the Athens Cultural Affairs Commission and is a volunteer percussionist with the Athens Symphony Orchestra.
Melisa “Misha” Cahnmann-Taylor
Advisory Board
Professor, Mary Frances Early College of Education
Melisa “Misha” Cahnmann-Taylor, Professor of Language and Literacy Education, is co-author of four scholarly books in education: Teachers Act Up: Creating Multicultural Learning Communities Through Theatre (2010); two editions of Arts-Based Research in Education (2008; second edition, 2018) and Enlivening the Language Classroom with Drama and Improv. A poet, she is also the author of a book of poems, Imperfect Tense, (2016), and currently serves as a Fulbright Ambassador Alum speaking about the power of poetry and theatre in teaching second or additional languages. Winner of four “Big Read” Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Beckman award for “Professors Who Inspire Social Change,” Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg and Anna Davidson poetry prizes, and a Fulbright for nine-month study of adult Spanish language acquisition in Oaxaca Mexico, she is a regular international speaker whose recent engagements include a 2017 Richard Ruiz Fellowship in Guanajuato, Mexico and an invited plenary to the 2018 English Teachers Association of Israel. A graduate of the New England College low-residency MFA program and the University of Pennsylvania’s Educational Linguistics doctoral program, her poems, essays, and articles about language learning have appeared in numerous literary and scholarly journals.
Chris Cuomo
Advisory Board
Professor, Philosophy and Women’s Studies
Chris Cuomo holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Formerly a professor of philosophy and women’s studies at the University of Cincinnati, Dr. Cuomo’s research focuses on ethics, feminist philosophies, race, sexuality, environmental ethics and art. She is the author of Feminism and Ecological Communities: An Ethic of Flourishing and The Philosopher Queen: Feminist Essays on War, Love & Knowledge, which was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award and an American Philosophical Association Book Award and coeditor of The Feminist Philosophy Reader. Dr. Cuomo has been awarded grants from the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Science Foundation and the Charles Phelps Taft Center.
Connie Frigo
Advisory Board
Executive Director, JMU X-Labs
Co-founder, Athens Hip Hop Harmonic
Connie Frigo is the Executive Director of the James Madison University X-Labs and an accomplished saxophone soloist, chamber musician, teacher, and speaker. She is co-founder of the Athens Hip Hop Harmonic, an inaugural Chair of the North American Saxophone Alliance’s Committee on the Status of Women, where her leadership has overseen the launch of a women’s mentoring program. Career highlights include six years with the U.S. Navy Band and seven years with the New Century Saxophone Quartet. She is a Fulbright Scholar (Netherlands). She is a steadfast organizer of interdisciplinary events with a focus on the creative process and engaging new audiences, resulting in meaningful intersections of performers, composers, socially-conscious non-profits, students, concerned and active citizens, and arts leaders. As a chamber musician, she received support from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Copland Fund, Meet the Composer, and Chamber Music America. Frigo has recordings with Channel Classics and Mark Custom Records.
David T. Gay
Advisory Board
Associate Professor, Mathematics
Director, Euclid Lab
David Gay works on problems in low-dimensional geometry and topology. “Low-dimensional” means dimensions two (think of life on a surface), three (think of your ordinary daily life, but maybe when your stick your hand through the ceiling it pops out through the floor) and four (think of the actual world you live in, space-time). On a day-to-day basis he confronts the problem of communicating complicated, but essentially visual, geometric ideas, and often this problem itself has an intrinsically appealing aesthetic. David also works on multiple math outreach projects, most notably as senior mentor for Camp Euclid, an online high school math research program run by Euclid Lab. Before joining the math department at UGA, David has held positions at the University of Iowa, the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, the University of Cape Town, l’Université du Québec à Montréal, the Nankai Institute of Mathematics, and the University of Arizona. He completed his PhD at the University of California Berkeley in 1999 under the supervision of Robion Kirby.
Rebecca Gose
Advisory Board
Associate Professor, Dance
Rebecca Gose (BSEd, MFA) was a principal dancer with Garth Fagan Dance from 1988-1993, with whom she toured extensively across the US and abroad, including such venues as Jacob’s Pillow, The Joyce Theatre, The Spoleto Festival (Italy), Israel Festival of the Arts, Internationales Tansfest (Germany), the Carlton Dance Festival (Brazil), as well as Brooklyn Academy of Music (NY), for the 1992 premiere of Griot, New York, Fagan’s evening length collaboration with musician Wynton Marsalis and sculptor Martin Puryear. Gose’s work as a performer and choreographer has been ongoing from 1993 to the present. Rebecca has worked extensively in arts/dance education as a teaching artist, arts consultant, and educator, including as a selected artistic design consultant with the Leonard Bernstein Center for the Arts. Her scholarly work, focusing on the scientific and somatic investigations that work to improve the learning environment for dancers and teachers, has been published in such scholarly journals as The Journal of Dance Education, Journal of Physical Education, Recreation and Dance, and International Journal of the Arts in Society, and the International Journal of Education and the Arts, among others.
Moon Jung Jang
Advisory Board
Associate Professor, Art
Moon Jung Jang is a graphic designer, visual artist, and teacher. She received an MFA in Graphic Design from Rhode Island School of Design in 2008 and is an associate professor of graphic design at the Lamar Dodd School of Art. Her primary research involves narrative systems such as Multiple Narratives in Visual Form, Polyhedralness as Multiple Narratives, and Color Value in Space-Time and promotion design for socio-cultural events and art exhibitions such as symbol, logotype, book, and poster design. Her work has been presented in solo exhibitions, Disturbed Boundaries(2009), A Minor Arc (2010), and % (2012). Her graphic design has appeared internationally and nationally in many exhibitions such as The Tranava Poster Triennial (Slovakia); The International Poster Triennial (Japan); The International Poster and Graphic Arts Festival of Chaumont (France); The Golden Bee Moscow International Biennale of Graphic Design; Print Regional Annual Competition (USA); Annual UCDA Design (USA); 365: AIGA (New York, USA); AIGA SEED Award GALA (Atlanta, USA).
Peter Van Zandt Lane
Advisory Board
Associate Professor of Composition, Music
Director of the Dancz Center for New Music
Peter Van Zandt Lane’s music has been praised by critics for its “depth, character, and pleasing complexity” (Boston Musical Intelligencer), and has been recognized for its “appeal to musicians and audiences, no matter their personal musical aesthetic” (Asymmetry Music Magazine). He composes for chamber ensembles, band, orchestra, and often integrates live electronics into his concert music. Dr. Lane holds composition degrees from Brandeis University and the University of Miami Frost School of Music, and studied composition with Melinda Wagner, Eric Chasalow, David Rakowski, and Lansing McLoskey. He is currently Assistant Professor of Composition and Director of the Dancz Center for New Music at the University of Georgia Hodgson School of Music, and previously held teaching positions at Brandeis University, Wellesley College, MIT, and Harvard.
T. Anthony Marotta
Advisory Board
Associate Professor, Theatre and Film Studies
T. Anthony Marotta specializes in performance movement, stage combat, mask design & performance, and puppetry. He completed his Master of Fine Arts at the University of Tennessee, and advanced studies of the Lecoq Physical Theatre/Mask pedagogy through the London International School of Performing Arts. Focused on the physical expressivity of the performer and performances in storytelling, he specializes in Commedia dell’Arte, mask, movement, puppetry, and stage combat teaching and performing nationally, regionally and internationally. His one-man original puppet-clown-mask piece exploring masculinity Hue Man has toured at festivals in Avignon (France), Montreal (Canada), Chicago, Portland, Atlanta, and Boulder. Anthony has performed in regional and New York venues including the Puppetry Arts Center of Atlanta, Walnut Street Theatre, Arden Theatre, the Clarence Brown Theatre, as well as various venues throughout Europe. He holds a current membership in Actors’ Equity (AEA). As a member of the Society of American Fight Directors (SAFD) with actor-combatant recognition, Anthony recently served as Fight Director for the Utah Shakespeare Festival, choreographing fights for their several summer seasons and tours, including productions of Macbeth, Richard III, Noises Off, 39 Steps and Fred Adams’ 50th Anniversary production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Anthony’s directing includes productions with regional theaters such as Neil Simon Festival, Brick Playhouse, and Rose of Athens.
Meredith Welch-Devine
Advisory Board
Assistant Dean, UGA Graduate School
Meredith Welch-Devine is a cultural anthropologist specializing in ecological and environmental anthropology. As the Assistant Dean of the UGA Graduate School she works with faculty across campus to enhance graduate education. She leads workshops and a teaches a course in Communication of Research and Scholarship, and organizes UGA’s Three Minute Thesis competition. Welch-Devine’s research interests include political ecology, politics and production of knowledge, collective management of common-pool resources, and conservation policy and practice.
Andrew Zawacki
Advisory Board
Professor, English
Andrew Zawacki is the author of three poetry books – Petals of Zero Petals of One, Anabranch, and By Reason of Breakings – and of several chapbooks: Georgia, co-winner of the 1913 Prize; Glassscape; Lumieretheque; Arrow’s Shadow; Videotape; Roche Limit; Bartleby’s Waste-book; and Masquerade, which received the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, The New Republic, and elsewhere, including the anthologies Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century, Walt Whitman Hom(m)age, 2005/1855, The Iowa Anthology of New American Poetries, and Great American Prose Poems: From Poe to the Present. A former fellow of the Slovenian Writers’ Association and the recipient of a Slovenian Ministry of Culture Translation Grant, Zawacki has edited Afterwards: Slovenian Writing 1945-1995 and Ales Debeljak’s new and selected poems, Without Anesthesia. His translation from the French of Sebastien Smirou, My Lorenzo, is forthcoming. Coeditor of Verse and of The Verse Book of Interviews, he has published criticism in the TLS, Boston Review, Talisman, How2, New German Critique, Australian Book Review, Religion and Literature, and other international journals. He has a PhD from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.
Honorary
Carmon Colangelo
Founding Director, 1999-2006
Ralph J. Nagel Dean
E. Desmond Lee Professor for Collaboration in the Arts
Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts
Washington University in St. Louis
From 1997 to 2006, Carmon Colangelo was the director of the Lamar Dodd School of Art at UGA. A widely exhibited artist known for large mixed-media prints that combine digital and traditional processes, Colangelo’s work has been featured in many solo shows and group exhibitions in Argentina, Canada, England, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and across the United States. His work has been collected by many of the nation’s leading museums, including the National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C., the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, and the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University. Colangelo joined Washington University as the first dean of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts in July 2006. As dean, Colangelo oversees the School’s four academic units – the College of Art, College of Architecture, Graduate School of Art, and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design – as well as the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, home to one of the nation’s finest university collections of modern art. Colangelo also serves as a member of the University Council and as the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Collaboration in the Arts.
Bala Sarasvati
Charter Member
Professor, Dance (retired)
Jane Willson Professor in the Arts
Bala is a Certified Movement Analyst (CMA) specializing in the application of movement theory to dance training and performance. She holds BS and BFA degrees from the University of Utah, MA and MFA degrees from The Ohio State University. She has served on the faculty for the Jose Limon Dance Institute, the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies, Seattle Dance Centre. Her dance training approach has been presented at El Contro Laban 2002 and Global Laban 2008, both in Rio de Janeiro and at Laban Centre London, UK; and International Council Kinetography Laban, Laban Centre, London. Bala has served as guest artist at numerous universities and intensive summer dance programs and choreographed over forty full-length dance pieces. Her choreography has been shown throughout the US and China, and in Brazil, Taiwan, France and Costa Rica. She has presented choreography at Judson Church and St. Mark’s Church in New York City; Seattle Bumbershoot Art Festivals, Seattle, WA; Piccolo Spoleto Festivals in Charleston, SC. In addition, she has presented choreography at National Dance Association and National American College Dance Festival conferences, and performed at two National Society for Literature and Science conferences. Shakti-The Force of Destiny, one of the many interactive computer and dance projects, was presented as a Cultural Olympiad Event during the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. Her dance for camera, Springbreak, was selected for the Quinto Festival International Video Danza ’99, Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has served on the board for the National American College Dance Festival Association 1995-2001 and the Laban/Bartenieff Institute of Movement Studies, NYC Board of Directors. Bala served as Head, Department of Dance at UGA from1998-1999 and 2000-2006.
Heather McIntosh
Ideas for Creative Exploration Honorary Fellow
Heather McIntosh (BMUS 2000) is a musician and composer of music for film and video. She is the curator of the AUX event and publishing series and served on the ICE Advisory Board. Heather created music for Examined Life, Compliance, The Rambler, Faults, Holbrook/Twain: An American Odyssey, and Z for Zachariah. Known as the house cellist for the Elephant 6 Collective and leader of The Instruments, she has played with of Montreal, The Olivia Tremor Control, The Music Tapes, Gerbils, Elf Power, Circulatory System, Apples in Stereo, Great Lakes, The Ladybug Transistor, Linda Perhacs, Kevin Ayers of the Soft Machine, Faust, Animal Collective, Cat Power, Superchunk, M Ward, The Clientele, St. Vincent, Azure Ray, Icy Demons, Japancakes, Bright Eyes, Washed Out, Dr. Dog, Norah Jones, Belle and Sebastian, Pacific UV, St. Vincent Gnarls Barkley, and Lil Wayne.
John Michael Boling
Ideas for Creative Exploration Honorary Fellow
John Michael Boling (BFA 2006) is an artist known for pioneering works in Internet art and video. He received an ICE student fellowship to attend The Kitchen Summer Institute and was a featured presenter in the 2007 ICE Open House: Net Art. John Michael co-founded and served as Head of Product for Are.na, an online tool for collaborative research and served as Associate Director of Rhizome. He is the creator of infamous art website 53 o’s and a founding member of the influential group blog Nasty Nets. His work has been shown internationally at institutions, festivals, and DIY spaces, including The New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, MASS MoCA, Galerie West in the Hague, New York Underground Film Festival, Milano Film Festival,Venice Film Festival, Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, and the Sundance Film Festival. His work and opinion have been featured in The New York Times, Tokion Magazine, Art News, Dazed and Confused, and Rolling Stone Magazine.
In Memoriam
Leonard V. Ball, Jr.
Charter Member
Associate Professor Emeritus, Music
Leonard Ball joined the Composition and Theory faculty at UGA in 1987 and led the Roger and Phyllis Dancz Center for New Music. His works were performed across the United States, in Europe, South America, and Japan. His electronic work has focused on interactivity involving dancers (movement) and sound. Dr. Ball held the degrees Bachelor of Music in theory and composition and Master of Music in composition from Kansas State University. His Doctor of Musical Arts in composition was earned at the University of Memphis. His principal teachers were T. Hanley Jackson, John Baur, and Donald Freund.