Each year, the College provides up to five Stuart Tave Teaching Fellowships, allowing graduate students to teach one undergraduate course of their own design in their home department. We’re pleased to share the news that Devon J. Borowski and Andrew Malilay White have received fellowships for the 2019-20 academic year. Courses are designed by the graduate students, and they should reflect their intellectual interests. However, the intent of this fellowship is to provide engaging and interesting courses for undergraduates—courses that are suitable for the department’s undergraduate curriculum as well as having a broader appeal.
Devon Borowski’s course is called “Queer Singing | Queer Spaces” and, in essence, explores the role of song and singing in queer culture(s), both historically and across the globe. The course will touch on everything from eighteenth-century castrati to twentieth-century camp, gay gospel singers to lip-syncing in drag, Troy Sivan and Carly Rae Jepsen to Orpheus and Arion. There will be an emphasis on creative participation, though students are not required or expected to have any prior training or experience in music or performance.
Andrew White’s course is called "Improvisation: Critical Studies." In this course, students will balance contradictory definitions of improvisation, which on one hand is a sequence of actions drilled in advance, and on the other hand is meant to be something transcendent and unexpected, something "not seen in advance" (im-pro-visus). The coursework includes reading, written reflection, listening, and creative projects. We foreground racialized interpretations of improvisation, as well as other sociocultural issues in its reception.