This fall, the One Flea Spare Project brought together faculty and students from five universities—Fordham, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Princeton University, Georgetown University, and SUNY Purchase—for shared projects, workshops, and classes, based on themes raised in the play. Set in London at a time when the city was beset by plague, the play revolves around a wealthy couple who is preparing to flee their house but are instead forced to quarantine for 28 days with two strangers who’ve snuck into their home.

In November, One Flea Spare’s creator, Naomi Wallace, participated in a webinar for the project for all of the universities involved, and this semester, she led a two-week playwriting workshop connected to the playwriting class that Fordham’s Daniel Alexander Jones teaches.

“What’s so brilliant about Naomi is that she has meditated on the human condition, and how we behave when we’re in quarantine, particularly around our own mortality and how relationships change when death is literally at your door,” said Ramos, noting that the interdisciplinary nature of the project expanded the reach of theater education.

“It was just an obvious choice. Everything in the play sort of parallels what we’re going through now.”

Beyond Theater Classes

The concept behind the project was simple. If a professor was teaching an online class in any discipline that addressed how plagues and pandemics affect literature and art, they could open it up to any student attending the participating universities. A student at Fordham could attend The Great Work Begins: Revisiting Angels in America During a Pandemic, which was offered at Georgetown in the fall, while a student at SUNY Purchase could attend Texts & Contexts: Plagues and Poxes, a course taught by Fordham’s Rebecca Stark-Gendrano, Ph.D. Professors were encouraged to include One Spare Flea in the syllabus for their classes; the majority of them did so.

This semester, the project’s major focus has been A Passage in Relief, a collaborative, virtual theatrical response to One Flea Spare being spearheaded by Princeton University’s Elena Araoz that will take place on April 26.

Wallace, who participated from London, called the project exhilarating.

“How students, artists, and writers read and see and perform my work is an education and a delight,” she said.

‘Imaginative Solidarity’

“One of the things that the One Flea Spare Project at Fordham inspired me to do was reformulate my theories about teaching and writing, as with the idea of ‘imaginative solidarity,’” Wallace said.

“Imaginative solidarity” was the focus of Wallace’s recent virtual workshop, which brought together students from the five universities on March 25 and April 1. She described it as a process of engaging in a dialogue with history and uncovering “the workings of U.S. racial capitalism and its long and ugly history of colonial dispossession and racial slavery.”

“This is about challenging our imaginations to break down the binaries between domestic and ‘foreign’ events, between what is happening in the United States and what our government is up to elsewhere,” she said.

Daria Kerschenbaum, a Fordham College at Lincoln Center senior majoring in English and theater, said the workshop helped her with her final project, a play about Edgar Allen Poe’s child bride, Virginia.

Acknowledging the Ghosts of History

As part of the workshop, Wallace asked students to research recent U.S. military campaigns; Kerschenbaum was tasked with researching the 1986 bombing campaign of Libya. Key to the exercise was exploring a sense of empathy for those who were on the receiving end of the bombs.

“I think talking with Naomi gave me a good perspective about how empathy is so important to creating diversity in entertainment,” said Kerschenbaum, who is in Fordham Theatre’s playwriting track.

“Social justice is remembering the ghosts of what has happened in our country and being able to acknowledge them and be in dialogue with them,” she said.

Kerschenbaum collaborated with Percival Hornak, a first-year graduate student at UMass Amherst who is supervising the construction of an interactive “lobby display” that can be viewed before and after the presentation of A Passage in Relief.

Expanding Community During Isolation

Hornak said a play about plagues gave him pause at first but collaborating with students at other universities has been very fulfilling.

“This past year, I’m not encountering as many people as I would; just people I’m in class with and people I work with. It’s been really nice to expand the people I interact with and embrace all these different universities’ approaches to teaching and to making theater,” he said.

The project was funded by an Arts and Science Deans’ Faculty Challenge Grant” for $9,703, but the job of pulling it all together fell to Emma McSharry, a senior pursuing design and production in the theater department.

“It’s been a lot of logistics, which is more difficult over Zoom and email, but that’s what I’ve been trained to do for the last three years, so I was ready,” she said laughing.

Ramos said the success of the project proved that people are really interested in reaching out to others, and he said he hopes that energy doesn’t dissipate when life begins to return to something resembling the past.

“There was an openness during the pandemic that I don’t think we’ve experienced before, and I think there’s a sense that when we come back in the fall, we’re all going to go back indoors and, in a way, we will be subject to those walls again,” he said.

“This confirmed that everyone really needs community.”

“Today’s events are designed for recognition, celebration, and appreciation of the numerous contributors to Fordham’s research accomplishments in the past two years,” said George Hong, Ph.D., chief research officer and associate vice president for academic affairs.

Hong said that Fordham has received about $16 million in faculty grants over the past nine months, which is an increase of 50.3% compared to the same period last year.

“As a research university, Fordham is committed to excellence in the creation of knowledge and is in constant pursuit of new lines of inquiry,” said Joseph McShane, S.J., president of Fordham, said during the virtual celebration. “Our faculty continue to distinguish themselves in this area. Today, today we highlight the truly extraordinary breadth and depth of their work.”

Earning Honors

Ten faculty members, representing two years of winners due to cancellations last year from the COVID-19 pandemic, were recognized with distinguished research awards.

“The distinguished research awards provide us with an opportunity to shine a spotlight on some of our most prolific colleagues, give visibility to the research achievements, and inspire others to follow in their footsteps,” Provost Dennis Jacobs said.

Recipients included Yuko Miki, associate professor of history and associate director of Latin American and Latinx Studies (LALSI), whose work focuses on Black and indigenous people in Brazil and the wider Atlantic world in the 19th century; David Budescu, Ph.D., Anne Anastasi Professor of Psychometrics and Quantitative Psychology, whose work has been on quantifying, judging, and communicating uncertainty; and, in the junior faculty category, Santiago Mejia, Ph.D., assistant professor of law and ethics in the Gabelli School of Business, whose work examines shareholder primacy and Socratic ignorance and its implications to applied ethics. (See below for a full list of recipients).

Diving Deeper

Eleven other faculty members presented in their recently published work in the humanities, social sciences, and interdisciplinary studies.

Jews and New York: ‘Virtually Identical’

Images of Jewish people and New York are inextricably tied together, according to Daniel Soyer, Ph.D., professor of history and co-author of Jewish New York: The Remarkable Story of a City and a People (NYU Press, 2017).

“The popular imagination associated Jews with New York—food names like deli and bagels … attitudes and manner, like speed, brusqueness, irony, and sarcasm; with certain industries—the garment industry, banking, or entertainment,” he said. “

Soyer quoted comedian Lenny Bruce, who joked, “the Jewish and New York essences are virtually identical, right?”

Soyer’s book examines the history of Jewish people in New York and their relationship to the city from 1654 to the current day. Other presentations included S. Elizabeth Penry, Ph.D., associate professor of history, on her book The People Are King: The Making of an Indigenous Andean Politics (Oxford University Press, 2019), and Kirk Bingaman, Ph.D., professor of pastoral mental health counseling in the Graduate School of Religion and Religious Education, on his book Pastoral and Spiritual Care in a Digital Age: The Future Is Now (Lexington Books, 2018).

Focus on Cities: The Reality Beyond the Politics

Annika Hinze, Ph.D, associate professor of political science and director of the Urban Studies Program, talked about her most recent work on the 10th and 11th editions of City Politics: The Political Economy of Urban America (Routledge, 11th edition forthcoming). She focused on how cities were portrayed by the Trump Administration versus what was happening on the ground.

“The realities of cities are really quite different—we’re not really talking about inner cities anymore,” she said. “Cities are, in many ways, mosaics of rich and poor. And yes, there are stark wealth discrepancies, growing pockets of poverty in cities, but there are also enormous oases of wealth in cities.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Hinze’s latest edition will show how urban density did not contribute to the spread of COVID-19, as many people thought, but rather it was overcrowding and concentrated poverty in cities that led to accelerated spread..

Other presentations included Nicholas Tampio, Ph.D., professor of political science, on his book Common Core: National Education Standards and the Threat to Democracy (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018); Margo Jackson, Ph.D., professor and chair of the division of psychological and educational services in the Graduate School of Education on her book Career Development Interventions for Social Justice: Addressing Needs Across the Lifespan in Educational, Community, and Employment Contexts (Rowman and Littlefield, 2019); and Clara Rodriguez, Ph.D., professor of sociology on her book America, As Seen on TV: How Television Shapes Immigrant Expectations Around the Globe (NYU Press, 2018).

A Look into Migration

In her book Migration Crises and the Structure of International Cooperation (University of Georgia Press, 2019), Sarah Lockhart, Ph.D. assistant professor of political science, examined how countries often have agreements in place to manage the flow of trade, capital, and communication, but not people. While her work in this book specifically focused on voluntary migration, it also had implications for the impacts on forced migration and the lack of cooperation among nations .

“I actually have really serious concerns about the extent of cooperation … on measures of control, and what that means for the future, when states are better and better at controlling their borders, especially in the developing world,” she said. “And what does that mean for people when there are crises and there needs to be that kind of release valve of movement?”

Other presentations included: Tina Maschi, Ph.D., professor in the Graduate School of Social Service, on her book Forensic Social Work: A Psychosocial Legal Approach to Diverse Criminal Justice Populations and Settings (Springer Publishing Company, 2017), and Tanya Hernández, J.D., professor of law on her book Multiracials and Civil Rights: Mixed-Race Stories of Discrimination (NYU Press, 2018).

Sharing Reflections

The day’s keynote speakers—Daniel Alexander Jones, professor of theatre and 2019 Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, and Tony Award winner Clint Ramos, head of design and production and assistant professor of design—shared personal reflections on how the year’s events have shaped their lives, particularly their performance and creativity.

For Jones, breathing has always been an essential part of his work after one of his earliest teachers “initiated me into the work of aligning my breath to the cyclone of emotions I felt within.” However, seeing another Black man killed recently, he said, left him unable to “take a deep breath this morning without feeling the knot in my stomach at the killing of Daunte Wright by a police officer in Minnesota.”

Jones said the work of theatre teachers and performers is affected by their lived experiences and it’s up to them to share genuine stories for their audience.

“Our concern, as theater educators, encompasses whether or not in our real-time lived experiences, we are able to enact our wholeness as human beings, whether or not we are able to breathe fully and freely as independent beings in community and as citizens in a broad and complex society,” he said.

Ramos said that he feels his ability to be fully free has been constrained by his own desire to be accepted and understood, and that’s in addition to feeling like an outsider since he immigrated here.

“I actually don’t know who I am if I don’t anchor my self-identity with being an outsider,” he said. “There isn’t a day where I am not hyper-conscious of my existence in a space that contains me. And what that container looks like. These thoughts preface every single process that informs my actions and my decisions in this country.”

Interdisciplinary Future

Both keynote speakers said that their work is often interdisciplinary, bringing other fields into theatre education. Jones said he brings history into his teaching when he makes his students study the origins of words and phrases, and that they incorporate biology when they talk about emotions and rushes of feelings, like adrenaline.

That message of interdisciplinary connections summed up the day, according to Jonathan Crystal, vice provost.

“Another important purpose was really to hear what one another is working on and what they’re doing research on,” he said. “And it’s really great to have a place to come listen to colleagues talk about their research and find out that there are these points of overlap, and hopefully, it will result in some interdisciplinary activity over the next year.”

Distinguished Research Award Recipients

Humanities
2020: Kathryn Reklis, Ph.D., associate professor of theology, whose work included a project sponsored by the Henry Luce Foundation on Shaker art, design, and religion.
2021: Yuko Miki, Ph.D., associate professor of history and associate director of Latin American and Latinx Studies (LALSI), whose work is on Black and indigenous people in Brazil and the wider Atlantic world in the 19th century.

Interdisciplinary Studies
2020: Yi Ding, Ph.D., professor of school psychology in the Graduate School of Education, who received a $1.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education for a training program for school psychologists and early childhood special education teachers.
2021: Sophie Mitra, Ph.D., professor of Economics and co-director of the Disability Studies Minor, whose recent work includes documenting and understanding economic insecurity and identifying policies that combat it.

Sciences and Mathematics
2020: Thaier Hayajneh, Ph.D., professor of computer and information sciences and founder director of Fordham Center of Cybersecurity, whose $3 million grant from the National Security Agency will allow Fordham to help Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Minority-Serving Institutions build their own cybersecurity programs.
2021: Joshua Schrier, Ph.D., Kim B. and Stephen E. Bepler Chair and professor of chemistry, who highlighted his $7.4 million project funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency on perovskites.

Social Sciences
2020: Iftekhar Hasan, Ph.D., university professor and E. Gerald Corrigan Chair in International Business and Finance, whose recent work has included the examination of the role of female leadership in mayoral positions and resilience of local societies to crises.
2021: David Budescu, Ph.D., Anne Anastasi Professor of Psychometrics and Quantitative Psychology, whose work has been on quantifying, judging, and communicating uncertainty.

Junior Faculty
2020: Asato Ikeda, Ph.D., associate professor of art history, who published The Politics of Painting, Facism, and Japanese Art During WWII.
2021: Santiago Mejia, Ph.D., assistant professor of law and ethics in the Gabelli School of Business, whose work focuses on shareholder primacy and Socratic ignorance and its implications to applied ethics.

On Dec. 2, Tommy joined the theater faculty for a virtual town hall on Zoom, where she responded to questions about her acting class at Fordham, her first experience working on a major motion picture, and the ghosts that find their way into all of her projects. Clint Ramos, head of design and production, moderated the discussion. The following is an edited excerpt.

Clint Ramos: How has your experience [at Fordham]been so far?

Liesl Tommy: The students that I have been working with have brought me joy every single session. They embody the things that I value the most in artists, which is curiosity and passion. It feels like that rush that one gets from rehearsal, of being in collaboration, of being with inquiring minds.

CR: What were the important [lessons]that you really wanted for them to get?

LT: The lesson plan that I had set for myself for the semester pivoted quickly in the face of what I was receiving from the students, in the face of their needs. My class is Creating a Character, and I pivoted from a pure acting class to something that was more spiritual. What I focused on was them as artists. Who are they, what are their voices, what are their dreams for themselves? And how do we make concrete practice manifest those things, in this time of turmoil?

CR: You’ve had so much success in directing. Is there any part of you that wants to go back to acting?

LT: No. I think that once you turn the corner [and spend]too many years away from it, your body changes and your performance muscles shift. I was an extremely disciplined actor because I had come from a dance background. I was one of those people who if I didn’t have literally three hours of physical activity a day, I didn’t feel like myself.

Once I switched to directing, the gaze shifted away from me, and I felt like my energy shifted from my body into my head. My workouts became much more about stress relief than being in top physical shape. I still work on monologues sometimes as a self-soothing activity, just to keep the connection between language and thought alive. When I’m talking to actors about that, about communicating thought, I just feel like I could never forget the thing that I’m asking them to do.

CR: When you’re talking about developing a practice for an actor in your class, is there anyone that you’ve said, ‘This works for a person who has trouble with this,’ and ‘This works for a person who has trouble with that’?

LT: There is a physical and a vocal practice that actors should be doing daily so that no matter what happens in that audition, that rehearsal room, or what happens as they’re walking down the street, they have connected with their pure self and their instrument.

The most important practice is one that allows you to know where your own power lies when people and forces are trying to take it away from you. I speak especially as a television director, when you’re walking into environments that are not always yours, that you didn’t create. Especially as a woman of color, you never know how welcome you are going to be in these environments.

CR: Do you think that informed your methodology in casting? You’ve been ahead of the curve in terms of really pushing for what we now call “nontraditional casting.”

LT: The phrase “nontraditional casting” isn’t useful for me because I grew up in South Africa, where people of color were in the majority. There was a huge Indian population, there was the indigenous population, and then also the African population. I just grew up saturated with every kind of person, eating every kind of food, and listening to every kind of music, and all of it synthesizing into a community.

I never really looked at it as nontraditional casting, I just looked at it as casting. But I never did what people call color-blind casting. When I cast outside of the dominant culture’s aesthetic, it was always with a political point of view that I was using to unpack ideas in the play.

CR: What was it like leaping from theater to a major-studio-backed motion picture?

LT: I’d always wanted to direct a film, and after Eclipsed we started kind of prepping for that. I was able to do a lot of very different kinds of television in a quick space of time with the eye on film eventually. Then, insanely, the Aretha Franklin biopic happened, and I chased it very hard. I had a very clear vision for it. The thing that I learned in television was that when in doubt, focus on storytelling. And I knew how to block, I knew how to compose, and I knew how to talk to actors. In my experience, even the stars, if you’re giving them something that will make them better, will not challenge you. They are so smart, and something magical happens. And then you’re on your way.

CR: What is the most important lesson you’ve learned throughout your career?

LT: Know what you love and then do that. There are certain things I just love and I put it on stage or on film all the time. As an artist, I accept that there are certain themes that in this lifetime I am meant to explore in my work, and I don’t fight it. I always put a ghost in everything that I am in charge of, and every single time it opens up something new in myself and my humanity.

CR: Yeah, what is that ghost thing?

LT: I don’t know, I just feel like we’re always learning about grief and we’re all haunted. I just feel like no one talks about it, but I feel like it’s one of the unifiers. Everybody eats, everybody drinks, everybody breathes air, everybody is haunted by grief.

CR: Anything that you can say to us that may have helped you buoy you forward?

LT: So much of our work is about muscling through. That’s good because we’re able to make magic happen with very little resources in the theater. But it also means that we put our minds and bodies through a lot.
I have realized that caring for my nervous system is what’s going to give me longevity in the business. I used to think it was money, I used to think it was maybe having a position of authority, being an artistic director or whatever. But it’s not that. So, the thing that I would say to everybody is, just make sure that you’re taking care of your nervous system and don’t close down to your community during this time. For us, that flow of energy is really survival.

If you’re worried you’ve exhausted all your Netflix options, look no further. Fordham News asked faculty and staff members for updated suggestions on the best things to read, watch, and listen to for the upcoming winter months. (In case you missed it, check out our last list of faculty recommendations here.)

Films

Jennifer Moorman, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication & Media Studies

Vampires vs. The Bronx (2020), directed by Osmany Rodriguez
I know Halloween is over, but it’s always horror season for me! This one was actually recommended to me by a student in my Horror Film class, and I found it moving as well as fun. A horror-comedy focused on three boys battling vampires while simultaneously fighting off gentrification in their Bronx neighborhood (an issue that should concern all of us at Fordham), this film has so much heart. It has its share of cheesy moments and clichés, but overall it entertains while reminding us that Black lives matter, our communities are worth saving, and we are stronger together.
Available on Netflix

Bacurau (2019), directed by Kleber Mendonça Filho & Juliano Dornelles
This Brazilian riff on The Most Dangerous Game is a thrilling, powerful, anticolonial tour de force. Warning: It gets pretty graphic. But its messages about the dangers of globalization, imperialism, and white supremacy are as urgent as ever, and will hopefully inspire you to organize in your own community to fight the power. Its meditation on the ways that advanced technologies invade our lives and can hurt as much as they help is particularly relevant in this moment of ever-increasing dependency on digital (and specifically remote-learning) tech.
Available on Amazon

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), directed by Céline Sciamma
Arguably the greatest queer love story (or any love story, for that matter) of the 21st century thus far. Exquisitely shot, each frame is a painting. The compositions are breathtaking, the characters written and portrayed with unusual depth, and the story is incredibly moving and all too relatable for anyone who has a “one that got away.”
Available on Hulu

The Lighthouse (2019), directed by Robert Eggers
This is a great companion piece to Robert Eggers’ previous feature, The Witch (which I also highly recommend). It’s darker and more challenging, but also funnier. Its exploration of the horrors of isolation feels all the more relevant now than at the time of its release, and if you look beneath the surface, you’ll find a biting critique of capitalism and toxic masculinity (and some would say, also a homoerotic love story).
Available on Amazon

Beth Knobel, Associate Professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies

Broadcast News (1987), directed by James L. Brooks
This is one of my favorite films about television news. It’s also filled with classic moments that speak to the nature of friendship, success, and love. I’ve shown it numerous times to my Fordham students to illustrate the power and limitations of broadcast journalism.
Available on Amazon

Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years 1954-1965 (1987)
Eyes on the Prize II: America at the Racial Crossroads 1965-1985 (1990)
Produced by Henry Hampton
Everyone who wants to understand the roots of the American civil rights movement should spend the time to watch Henry Hampton’s monumental, prize-winning documentary series Eyes on the Prize. Its 14 parts, produced as two series, explore the major moments of the movement, from school desegregation, to the fight for voting rights, to the elections of Black politicians in major cities like Chicago. It’s engrossing and important.
Available on Amazon

Brandy Monk-Payton, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies

Time (2020), directed by Garrett Bradley
This award-winning experimental documentary by Garrett Bradley is a beautiful and intimate portrait of a Black family that follows Sybil “Fox Rich” Richardson as she fights for over 20 years to free her husband from his prison sentence. Using interviews as well as Rich’s own homemade videos, the film is a brilliant love story in an era of mass incarceration.
Available on Amazon

Television Shows

Brandy Monk-Payton

The Queen’s Gambit (2020)
Based on a 1983 novel of the same name, this limited series is a coming-of-age story about Beth Harmon, an orphan who also happens to be a chess prodigy. Set during the Cold War, Beth defies the odds as a female player who gains widespread public attention winning in a male-dominated sport, while also privately battling addiction. Watch for the mesmerizing scenes of chess play.
Available on Netflix

Grand Army (2020)
This gritty young adult drama series is set in Brooklyn and follows a multicultural ensemble of teenagers as they confront issues of identity at their prestigious public high school. At times difficult to watch due to its themes, the film has vivid characters and stellar performances by the young cast.
Available on Netflix

Jacqueline Reich, Professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies

My Brilliant Friend (2018-present)
There are two seasons available of this amazing adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s four novel series set in Naples beginning in 1945. Most of the actors are non-professional, and there are wonderful echoes to Italian neorealism and other film traditions. It is compelling storytelling at its best, and when we can’t travel to Italy, the series transports us there.
Available on HBO

Borgen (2010-2013)
Borgen is probably one of the most highly praised international television series in recent memory, and Netflix subscribers can now see it for the first time. It revolves around the first Danish female prime minister and her family as she adapts to her new role. You will be riveted. Also along these lines on Netflix is The Crown, with Season 4 having just been released.
Available on Netflix

The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977)
One of the pioneering television series of the 1970s, Mary Tyler Moore plays Mary Richards, a single career woman living in Minneapolis. It was one of the first shows to feature work life and home life (modeled after The Dick Van Dyke Show, also starring Moore), and spawned several spinoffs (Rhoda, Phyllis, Lou Grant). I watched all seven seasons during the worst of the quarantine, and Mary’s sunny disposition and optimism were just what I needed. For a great companion read, I recommend the book Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted by Jennifer Kieshin Armstrong, which tells the background story behind the scenes.
Available on Hulu

Clint Ramos, Assistant Professor of Design and Head of Design and Production

Alone (2015-present)I love it because it shows you how we really need socialization.
Available on Netflix

Street Food (2019)
It’s set both in Asia and Latin America. I love it because it’s not about the food, it’s about the people who make the food.
Available on Netflix: Asia and Latin America

Beth Knobel

Occupied (2015-2017)
This multilingual Norwegian three-season television series revolves around a Russian invasion of Norway over energy resources. As someone who spent 14 years living in Moscow, working as a journalist, I was glued to the edge of my seat by the portrayal of the Russians and the twists and turns in this biting political thriller.
Available on Netflix

Books

Heather Dubrow, Professor of English; John D. Boyd, S.J. Chair in the Poetic Imagination; and Director, Reading Series, Poets Out Loud

Detective fiction and crime fiction in general! Long-standing favorites include Sherlock Holmes and Ed McBain, especially the ones about the 87th precinct, which I enjoy not least because they are set in New York. 

Michael Connelly has been another favorite for some years—partly because of how the values of the detective are represented (he repeatedly evokes police work as a “mission”) and also because of how the relationship with his daughter has developed in the course of the series. But OK, I’ll let the cat out of the bag: I’m writing a critical article on Connelly, which demonstrates that I need to try harder to follow the advice I give my students about getting away completely from academic work occasionally. 

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
What an extraordinary eye and ear he has for English culture.

Seamus Heaney
Not surprisingly, I keep returning to Heaney, virtually any of his poetry books and prose too. 

Why I Am Not a Toddler by Cooper Bennett Burt
Given our troubled times I’d recommend for light reading, especially to people who enjoy some of the originals, the parodies of golden oldie poems Stephanie Burt claims were written by her infant son. One of my favorites there is in fact a riff on the Bishop poem that is itself one of my favorites, “One Art.” [Bishop’s compelling lament, “The art of losing isn’t hard to master” becomes the kid’s “The art of mouthing isn’t hard to master . . . And look! my last, or / next to last, of three big crayons…”] 

Art Deco Chicago: Designing Modern America by Robert Bruegmann (Editor)
I love reopening and flipping through art books, including catalogues of exhibits to which I’ve gone. Art deco means a lot to me, and right now that bedside table also includes a book on deco mailboxes, a sub-sub genre of art deco design no doubt. And I often revisit a couple of books I have on the lacquer creations and other work of Zeshin—wow.

Music

Chuck Singleton, General Manager, WFUV

WFUV’s The Joni Project, which features artists covering songs by iconic singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell

Our Stress-Free Soundtrack pandemic playlist

The EQFM “Album ReCue” series, on landmark albums from women, which includes Spotify playlists of every album and Alisa Ali’s conversation with WFUV DJs

George Bodarky, News Director, WFUV

Everyone should have Nina Simone’s “O-o-h Child” on their playlist, especially now.

But really tapping into ’70s R&B has been uplifting, including “Shining Star” from Earth, Wind & Fire. 

Anne Fernald, Professor of English and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Every summer, my family and I make a summer playlist. The rule is that it has to be brief enough to fit on a CD (so 100 minutes or so) and that it should capture the mood of the summer. We spend our summers up on the New York side of the Canadian border, listening to a lot of CBC 2. Their smooth-voiced nighttime DJ is a musician called Odario Williams, and his “Low Light (In This Space)” is a song that captures the hopes and aspirations coming out of #BlackLivesMatter.

Also on that playlist was Phoebe Bridgers’ “Kyoto,” which is both heart-breaking and inspiring and just grows and grows on me. 

And I am always charmed by the Swedish song “Snooza” by Säkert! It’s (apparently) about urging your lover to hang out and snooze a little longer. It’s a very cheerful pop song in a language I don’t speak and one of those gifts from the algorithm: a “you might like” song that I love. 

Clint Ramos, head of design and production for Fordham Theatre, was nominated for two Tonys: one for best costume design, for The Rose Tattoo; and one for best scenic design, for Slave Play.

In a tweet, he expressed gratitude for the nominations and wrote, “May we always remember that this is only intermission and when we’re back, may our desire for a more equitable American theatre reflect the immense love we have for it.”

This fall, Ramos and the rest of the Fordham Theatre program have adapted to telling stories without physical stages on which to perform. He also has enlisted five university theater programs in the Northeast for an online production stemming from themes in One Flea Spare, a 1995 play by Naomi Wallace set in plague-ravaged London during the 17th century.

John Benjamin Hickey, FCLC ’85, was nominated for best performance by an actor in a featured role in a play, for his turn in The Inheritance. Hickey won the Tony in that same category in 2011 for his performance in The Normal Heart. Of his performance in The Inheritance, Matthew Lopez’s six-hour-plus story about gay men in the 21st century that was inspired by E.M. Forster’s novel Howards End, Variety’s Marilyn Stasio wrote, “Hickey plays Henry with passion and dignity, a near-impossible combination to pull off.”

Kenny Leon, who served as the Denzel Washington Endowed Chair in Theatre at Fordham in fall 2014, was nominated for best direction of a play for his work on A Soldier’s Play. Charles Fuller’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama, about a murder at a U.S. Army base in 1944 Louisiana, premiered off-Broadway in 1981 and starred a young Denzel Washington, FCLC ’77, just four years out of Fordham. In the New York Daily News, Chris Jones wrote, “Leon manages to direct a show that doesn’t compromise those difficult themes [of systemic racism and violence]while also embracing the commercial and highly entertaining nature of the writing.”

This year’s awards ceremony will be held virtually, on a date still to be determined.

From Oct. 1 to 4, hundreds of alumni, family, and friends—from as far as Germany—tuned in for an expanded series of virtual events that drew on some of the best-loved Homecoming traditions, like the 5K Ram Run and tailgate parties, and included a “pub” trivia competition, updates on academic and student life amid COVID-19, and a tribute to the 50th anniversary of a Fordham football milestone.

In addition to joining panels and discussions sponsored by the Office of Alumni Relations, Fordham graduates took to social media, where thousands viewed Homecoming Instagram stories and tweets shared via the @fordhamalumni accounts, and others used the #FordhamHomecoming20 hashtag to post their own messages, including pictures of pets and kids decked out in Fordham gear.

A Forum for FCLC

Things kicked off on Thursday evening with a panel discussion featuring two relative newcomers to the Fordham College at Lincoln Center community: Laura Auricchio, Ph.D., who became dean of the college in August 2019, and Tracyann Williams, Ph.D., who joined FCLC as assistant dean for student support and success last February.

Fordham University Alumni Association Advisory Board member Samara Finn Holland, FCLC ’03, moderated the discussion, during which the deans shared their observations about FCLC students.

“They are an amazing bunch of people,” Auricchio said. “These are students who are not only intelligent and motivated, but they’re really just decent, kind, wonderful human beings.” She recalled several instances of students greeting her when they saw her around the city.

Auricchio noted that political science, economics, and psychology are the three most popular majors among current FCLC students, and the fashion studies minor is growing particularly quickly. She said her office is focused on four areas: connecting to neighbors, enriching courses, enhancing research, and globalizing the curriculum.

Both she and Williams addressed the unique challenges faculty and students face during the pandemic, and Williams noted that part of her job is to help students acknowledge their feelings of disappointment that it’s not a typical academic year, and doing what she can to assist them.

“I am very much interested in always asking students what their needs are and not deciding for them,” she said.

Having worked at other New York City universities before arriving at FCLC, both Auricchio and Williams shared what they think makes Fordham so special.

“I feel as though it’s a unique place where students can come be part of a deeply caring, close-knit community that will support them and help them as they branch out into the city,” Auricchio said. “And to me, it’s just the best of both worlds.”

Pub Trivia at Home

Alumnus Tim Tubridy, FCRH ’99, and his brother, James Tubridy, co-owners of DJs @ Work, hosted a virtual pub trivia session on Friday night. Attendees were invited to answer 10 Fordham-themed questions, either individually or as teams.

The first question of the night delved into a bit of the University’s architectural history: “For what church were the stained-glass windows in the University church intended?” Father McShane delivered both the question and answer (St. Patrick’s Cathedral, when it was located on Mulberry Street), joking that he’d been imagining Jeopardy! theme music playing as he gave contestants time to respond.

Other fun facts unearthed during the Q&A included how many books are housed in the Fordham libraries (more than 2 million), how many acres the Lincoln Center and Rose Hill campuses encompass (8 and 85, respectively), and how many live ram mascots have lived on campus (28).

At the end of the hour-long session, three teams were tied for first place with a whopping 20,000 points each.

A Virtual 5K Ram Run

While the 5K Ram Run is usually held at Rose Hill during Homecoming weekend, this year, alumni were invited to run, jog, or walk a five-kilometer trek of their own and to share photos on social media. Runners were also encouraged to share their finishing times by taking screenshots of their running apps, and the Office of Alumni Relations will be sending prizes to those who submitted their times.

Justin LaCoursiere, FCRH ’12, posted a photo from Central Park and said, “Fordham Homecoming looks a little different this year, but I’m still taking part in some fun [virtual]activities, like the Annual 5K Ram Run.”

Academic and Student Life Amid the Pandemic

On Saturday morning, a panel of Fordham administrators and faculty discussed the continued uncertainty of COVID-19, its impact on current and prospective Fordham students, and how they’re working to build and strengthen a sense of community under the circumstances. The conversation was moderated by Michael Griffin, associate vice president for alumni relations.

J. Patrick Hornbeck, professor of theology, secretary of the Faculty Senate, and special faculty advisor to the provost for strategic planning, said that soon after Fordham canceled in-person classes and shifted to a virtual format this past March, faculty began planning to avoid such abrupt disruptions for the fall semester. That’s how Fordham developed its flexible hybrid model, which mixes online and in-person learning.

“We would provide opportunities for students to learn and for faculty to teach in several different modalities,” he said. “The idea was, we did not know how things were going to go week-by-week and month-by-month. How could we deliver [a Fordham education]regardless of the way the pandemic would play out?”

During the panel, Patricia Peek, Ph.D., dean of undergraduate admission, said that some of the changes implemented this year, such as virtual guided tours and information sessions, could become permanent to help make Fordham more accessible in the long term.

“I think, even when we’re fully on the ground, we will now always have virtual events because they’re providing so many opportunities and access for students,” she said.

Clint Ramos, head of design and production for Fordham Theatre, noted that the shift “was especially challenging for theatre because our education … is really experiential and a lot of our pedagogy is founded on the ability to gather.” But he said the program has met these challenges head-on, pointing to opportunities for creativity, like a collaborative effort he initiated with theater programs at Princeton, Georgetown, SUNY Purchase, and UMass Amherst. The One Flea Spare Project allows students to virtually attend classes at other universities and collaborate with each other on projects on multiple platforms based on themes in One Flea Spare, a 1995 play by Naomi Wallace set in a plague-ravaged London during the 17th century.

Juan Carlos Matos, assistant vice president for student affairs for diversity and inclusion, spoke about creative ways in which students have tried to maintain a sense of community, whether or not they’re studying on campus. This has included hosting socially distanced outdoor events, such as a “silent disco” on the plaza at Lincoln Center or a musical performance from the Coffey Field bleachers at Rose Hill, for an online audience and a limited number of students in person.

He also said that the pandemic has sharpened students’ focus on social justice, in particular the calls for racial equality that were revitalized this summer.

“Energy that usually is exhausted on other things was nailed into Black Lives Matter in a way where folks who have privilege are just realizing, ‘Hey, these things are happening,’ whereas folks on the margins have always experienced these things.”

Matos said this has spurred action at the University, including an anti-racism plan from Joseph M. McShane, S.J., president of Fordham. And he said the offices of student and multicultural affairs are continuing to offer a variety of programming to keep students engaged. One of the benefits of having virtual or hybrid events is that more students can attend.

“Sometimes it’s difficult for someone to have to choose one campus or the other or we may be offering something on one campus and not the other,” he said. “But virtually, now people can attend in any capacity.”

Shakespeare and Pop Culture

Shakespearean scholar Mary Bly, Ph.D., chair of Fordham’s English department, led a mini-class titled “Pop Romeo & Juliet” on Saturday afternoon. Attendees were encouraged to watch Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 film, Romeo + Juliet, prior to the class, during which Bly delved into the afterlife of the teen duo and their famous star-crossed love.

“Sociologists have made a pretty reasonable case for the argument that Romeo and Juliet actually changed the way we think about love in the Western world, which is very interesting,” Bly said.

Joined by English professor Shoshana Enelow, Bly discussed the idea of cultural capital, looking at how the characters of Romeo and Juliet have survived and how they’ve been transformed in modern adaptations, other films, music, and advertisements. She and Enelow drew parallels to West Side Story, the Beatles, and even a Taylor Swift music video, inviting attendees to write in impressions and examples of their own using Zoom’s Q&A feature.

An Afternoon with Athletics

Fordham sports fans attended two athletics-focused virtual events on Saturday afternoon, including a conversation between Ed Kull, interim director of athletics, and Head Football Coach Joe Conlin.

While the football season, along with those of other fall sports, has been pushed back to spring 2021, winter sports like basketball are planning to get started in late November. Kull highlighted some of the work that has been done to facilities during the pandemic, noting that not having students around for games has allowed several projects to be completed earlier than expected. Among the upgrades that players, coaches, and fans will now find are a new floor for the Frank McLaughlin Family Basketball Court in Rose Hill Gym, renovations to the strength and conditioning and team medicine spaces, and new offices for football staff.

As his team prepares to play in the spring, Conlin discussed the changes to workouts and practices they’ve had to adopt in the time of COVID-19, including health monitoring, socially distanced weight training, and wearing masks under their helmets during practice. Although he and his staff are not allowed to recruit high school players in person this year, they have been talking to recruits over Zoom and reviewing videos to assess their strength and athleticism.

“It’s been challenging at times, but it’s also been a lot of fun,” he said of this new way of doing things on and off the field. “We’ll continue to make it work for as long as we have to.”

Kull noted that out of the 44 seniors across spring sports whose final season was interrupted by cancellations last spring, 19 have decided to come back for a fifth year of eligibility.

Later that afternoon, the Tubridy brothers returned to host a virtual tailgate party that featured a welcome from Father McShane, trivia, performances by the Fordham band from the Coffey Field bleachers, and video updates from departments and groups like the Fordham University Alumni Association, the Center for Community Engaged Learning, and the Mimes and Mummers Alumni Association.

Kull and Conlin also returned for a pre-recorded video from the gravesite of Fordham graduate and NFL coaching legend Vince Lombardi, FCRH ’37, an appropriate lead-in to the tailgate’s final portion: a roundtable discussion with nine players from Fordham’s 1970 football team, which defeated Georgetown 50 years ago during that year’s homecoming game, just weeks after Lombardi’s death.

Moderated by WFUV’s Emmanuel Berbari, a Fordham College at Rose Hill senior, the players recalled the dominant ground game displayed by the Rams in their 39-17 win over the Hoyas, led by Eric Dadd’s 235 rushing yards and three touchdowns. Kevin Sherry, GABELLI ’70, who played offensive tackle, noted that Georgetown had beaten Fordham the previous year, and the Rams were looking for revenge.

Perhaps an even greater motivation for the team was the emotional pregame scene, when Lombardi’s widow, Marie, his brother Joseph, and the remaining members of Fordham’s “Seven Blocks of Granite” offensive line from Lombardi’s playing days honored the Fordham and NFL legend, who had died of colon cancer on September 3. The 1970 season also marked the return of varsity football to Fordham.

Peter “Pino” Carlesimo, FCRH ’71, the team’s starting quarterback, was among the panelists. “I think the importance of the game can be summed up very easily when I when I looked at that film and I saw my uncle Pete [Carlesimo, FCRH ’40, Fordham’s athletic director at the time] escorting Mrs. Lombardi off the field and tears coming down her eyes,” he said. “It was probably the biggest game I played in my career.”

Closing with Centeredness and Prayer

On Sunday morning, Carol Gibney, associate director of campus ministry for spiritual and pastoral ministries and director of spiritual life, leadership, and service, led a session focusing on “integrating Ignatian spirituality with the practice of yoga.” During the 45-minute practice, Gibney used breathwork to break down the word “grace,” infusing the ideas of gratitude, reflection, affirmation, centeredness, and enthusiasm and excitement into the yoga flow.

The virtual—but still communal—Homecoming weekend came to a close with a livestream of Mass from University Church, concelebrated by Father McShane and Damian O’Connell, S.J., alumni chaplain.

—Additional reporting by Kelly Kultys and Sierra McCleary-Harris

Bubnis, who assumed the role last year, said it wasn’t really a hard call.

“As artists, our students are resilient and have the skill set to adjust and adapt accordingly. I felt it was important for our collective morale to forge ahead with the season. Our mainstage season is one of our anchors that we build our year upon and keeping it intact as everything around us was changing so rapidly was important to us,” she said.

“I wanted us to face the challenges of the semester head-on. That meant pushing through and finding solutions. Going off the grid is not what the spirit of the theatre and our program is about. The show must always go on,” she said, adding that most of the program’s classes are being offered in a hybrid online/in-person format.

And so, on Oct. 8 at 8 p.m., the department will kick off a season titled “Into the Unknown” with a virtual production of Jaclyn Backhaus’ Men on Boats. The show, which will be directed by Sarah Elizabeth Wansley, will run on Zoom for three nights, free of charge. It will be followed in November by a virtual production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. In the spring, productions of Water by the Spoonful by Quiara Alegría Hudes and Everybody by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins will follow.

Many of the theater program’s fall classes will revolve around the mainstage season, with professors using remote learning—and remote performances—as a way to explore important elements of acting and collaboration.

Connecting to Each Other Through Screens

Dawn Saito, an artist-in-residence who teaches Acting 1 and Movement for Actors, said she has had success on Zoom teaching the Laban movement analysis, a method and language used for describing, visualizing, interpreting, and documenting human movement.

“I have many exercises for opening up the body so the actor can transform into different characters, textures, and colors,” she said.

“They have enough room to be able to inhabit these images that I prompt them with.”

Scene work between two actors can be a challenge when a student is not in the same physical space as their partner, but that too can be overcome. During class, Saito sends students to breakout rooms, where they work together to listen and respond to each other.

In the exercise, one actor will move while the other remains frozen. The actor that is frozen will then respond to the movement of the one who is moving. After practicing with each other, they rejoin the larger group and share their progress. (To see movement pieces created by Saito’s students during quarantine last spring, click here.)

“A much as possible, I’m asking actors to radiate their energy, so that they’re connecting to their partners through the screen,” Saito said.

To create the appearance of action, students have practiced “handing” a cup of tea to one another by moving it toward the camera, and when they move their hand, the person on the other side will seemingly receive it. Because students are learning how to engage in their whole body, she isn’t worried that it’ll be difficult to transition back to in-person acting once the pandemic has subsided. In any case, actors have a primal need to be heard, she said, regardless of the platform.

“Art is necessary, especially in challenging times. People need an outlet, they need to see their stories told, and the cathartic process is healing,” she said.

Reflecting on Different Aspects of Theater

Michael Zampelli, S.J., an associate professor of theater who moved to Fordham this year from Santa Clara, is one of three professors teaching theater history this semester. His class which meets both online and in-person, focuses on the purpose of theater.

His class gives students a chance to reflect not only on what people thought of the theater historically and how it functions in society, but also what is happening to them right now, he said.

“It’s encouraging a sort of self-implicating reflection on what they do in a way that I don’t think would have been the case if we were doing this pre-Covid. Even though you hoped they were asking themselves questions like ‘How this is affecting me?’ and ‘How are we learning about how theater companies form?’—you could always have not gone down that road,” he said.

“Now it’s much harder to not go down that road, precisely because they’re responsible for generating theater during a time of great upheaval. The questions are not theoretical questions.”

Raekwon Fuller, a second-year student at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, created this piece, which is meant to evoke what it feels like to be in Fuller’s universe, for Dawn Saito’s Movement for the Actor”class.

Learning to Speak the Same Language

Ntokozo Fuzunina Kunene, a designer who joined the faculty last year, has been teaching the class Theater Collaboration remotely from her native Johannesburg in South Africa. The class, which she co-teaches with acting program head Matthew Maguire, helps future directors, playwrights, designers, and actors speak to each other more effectively.

“I’m a costume designer, but I can’t necessarily think in terms of lighting, so I still want to make sure that I’m able to communicate with the light designer, because so much of our work impacts each other,” she said.

“When they say, ‘Oh, this is too bright,’ I need to be able to understand how to help reduce the brightness. Maybe something that the actor is wearing is too white. So how do we work together to combat that?”

To achieve that, the class is structured around productions that students from different theater tracks, such as acting and design, are invited to create independently based on prompts, which range from lengthy conversations that Kunene and Maguire record in advance to simple five-word poems.

Let’s Be More Limber

Clint Ramos, the head of the Design and Production track, changed the syllabi in his classes so that instead of working on several projects, students are focusing on one mainstage production for the whole semester.

Rather than adapting traditional theater to the current circumstances, he sees students innovating to create a new form. When you stage a production via Zoom, for instance, it’s worth investigating what it means to say that characters in a play are together in a specific room.

“Does it mean the actors are using the same background? The same lighting?” he said.

“For designers, that bridge already existed, because a lot of the designs are also created for film. This gave us an opportunity to lean in on that bridge. We’ve kind of overlooked this because we were so into live performance. We’re saying, let’s be more limber and see that you can do. The more limber the students become, the more possibilities they have for the future.”

Ramos has also enlisted five university theater programs in the Northeast for an online production stemming from themes in One Flea Spare, a 1995 play by Naomi Wallace set in a plague-ravaged London during the 17th century. Students are virtually attending classes at other universities and are collaborating with each other on works connected to the play. When it is finished, the recordings will live on a website hosted by Fordham.

Liliana Gutierrez, a second-year student at Fordham College at Lincoln Center, created this piece, which is meant to evoke what it feels like to be in Gutierrez’ universe, for Dawn Saito’s Movement for the Actor class.

What Will ‘the Biz’ Look Like?

Theater is also big business, and that business is facing hard times; Broadway has been dark since March. Students who took Theater Management with Stephen Sosnowski, FCLC ’03, normally attended class at his office in Times Square. Sosnowski is senior vice president at SpotCo, where he has spearheaded advertising campaigns for more than 50 Broadway shows and cultural institutions.

His first remote class featured guest speaker Matt Ross, creator of the COVID-19 Theater Think Tank, which is working on processes for theaters to reopen safely. Sosnowski was reticent about the class at first but said he felt optimistic by the energy students brought to the meeting.

“I got a little emotional at the end of the class. These students coming to class; I’m in awe of them, frankly,” he said.

He admitted it’s impossible to predict with certainty what the industry will look like when it emerges from the pandemic. But he’s tried to provide a window into that future, through guest speakers such as Victoria Bailey, executive director of the Theater Development Fund; and Adam Siegal, managing director of Lincoln Center Theater.

“Everything I talk about is, ‘What was it like pre-March 12, and what do we think it’ll look like and what will the opportunity be like,’” he said.

“The key word is opportunity. I see this as a time where there’s a lot of opportunity to enact change. We can figure that out together.”

For a “backstage” tour of Men on Boats by senior Chloe Rice, visit the theatre department’s Instagram page.

Anne Fernald’s “Whatever” Soup

Anne Fernald, Ph.D., professor of English and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, has maintained her Sunday night efforts to cook for the work week. “I realized that if I did not do it, I would revert to my natural diet, which is bread and cheese with some butter,” she says. “I do nothing but teach and cook these days and, in a welcome development, my husband has been cooking a tiny bit, too.” Her favorite recipe hails from The New York Times’ Samin Nosrat. It’s called Whatever You Want Soup, and it “serves as a canvas for any kind of chunky soup,” Nosrat writes. Here is Fernald’s take on it.

Ingredients
4 tablespoons butter, olive oil, or neutral-tasting oil
2 medium onions, diced
3 cloves garlic, sliced
Kosher salt
6 to 8 cups meat, vegetables, or other add-ins
Ground turkey
Shredded cabbage
Carrots, cut into rounds
Tomato, chopped
Green onion, sliced
1 1⁄2pounds raw, boneless chicken (optional)
8 cups water or chicken stock, preferably homemade

Steps
1. Set a large Dutch oven or stockpot over medium-high heat and add 4 tablespoons butter or oil. When the butter melts or the oil shimmers, add onions and garlic, and a generous pinch of salt.
2. Reduce the heat to medium and cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions are tender, about 15 minutes.
3. Place the meat, vegetables, and other add-ins in the pot, along with the raw chicken (if using), and add enough liquid to cover. Season with salt. Increase heat to high and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer.
4. Cook until the flavors have come together and the vegetables and greens are tender, about 20 minutes more. If you added raw chicken, remove it from the soup when cooked, allow to cool, shred, and return to the soup. Taste and adjust for salt.
5. Add more hot liquid if needed to thin the soup to desired consistency. Taste and adjust for salt.
6. Serve hot, and garnish as desired.

Yield: 6 to 8 servings l Time: About 45 minutes
Base recipe courtesy of Samin Nosrat/The New York Times

The Raffetto Family’s Pink Rice

Raffetto’s has been selling made-in-house pasta and other Italian specialties on New York City’s Houston Street since 1906, spanning four generations of the family. The two most recent generations include brothers Richard, FCRH ’82, and Andrew, FCRH ’84, and Andrew’s daughter Sarah, PCS ’13. Romana Raffetto, Richard and Andrew’s mother, made this dish many times over the years. The Raffettos still make it regularly, Sarah says, because it is so delicious, comforting, and easy. “We use the Reggiano crumbs because, like Nonna taught us, we try not to waste anything, and while cutting wheels of cheese for retail we save the broken crumbs for future recipes.”

Ingredients
1 cup Arborio rice
1 ice cream scoop of salt (a common measurement in our kitchen)
4 tablespoons (1⁄2 stick) butter
4 tablespoons Raffetto’s tomato and basil sauce (or a similar sauce of your choice)
Parmigiano-Reggiano crumbs to taste

Steps
1. Bring a pot of salted water to boil. Add rice, cover, and cook for 20 minutes.
2. While the rice is cooking, you can get the butter ready by melting it in a bowl. Otherwise, make sure that the butter is out long enough to soften so it will melt easily when the rice is done cooking.
3. When the rice is cooked, strain with a fine mesh strainer and add to the bowl with butter. Stir in Raffetto’s tomato and basil sauce (or any red sauce) in tablespoon increments, adding more or less as desired.
4. Stir in Parmigiano and eat immediately while everything is warm and the cheese melts, resulting in a beautiful light pink color with chunks of tomatoes.

Note: “Nonna Romana hardly ever measured anything,” Sarah says. “She was a casual cook who
knew by eye more than numbers. Modify slightly to your needs and enjoy!”

Yield: 4 to 6 servings l Time: About 20 minutes

Taylor Ha’s Whipped Coffee

Fordham graduate student and Fordham News staff writer Taylor Ha recently recorded herself making a drink that’s gone viral amid the pandemic. Whipped coffee, a four- ingredient beverage that originated in South Korea, was recently featured on TikTok’s trending page, with more than 312,000 videos using the hashtag #whippedcoffee, according to ABC News. In their home kitchen, Ha and her mother created their own version of the popular drink, complete with a slow-motion video of the production process. They also made spaghetti aglio e olio. “Both were delicious and super satisfying to make,” Ha says. “I’ll admit I didn’t actually cook, since I was filming everything, but it was nice to bond with my mom at home.”

Ingredients
2 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons instant ground coffee
2 tablespoons freshly boiled water
1 cup almond milk or any other milk (enough to fill a glass 3⁄4 of the way up)

Steps
1. Combine the sugar, instant coffee, and boiled water in a small bowl, whisking the mixture until it becomes silky smooth and turns a light shade of brown. Set aside.
2. Place a few ice cubes in a glass cup and fill the cup three-quarters full with almond milk.
3. Add a few dollops of whipped coffee on top and gently stir the whole thing.

Daejah Woolery’s Jamaican Dumplings with Jerk Chicken and Butternut Squash

When Fordham College at Lincoln Center sophomore Daejah Woolery moved off campus, she started cooking more. She says she doesn’t always have the time to make elaborate dishes, but as a Jamaican, “food is super important to the culture,” so she makes an extra effort to cook from scratch. “I’m excited to make this for my family and show them my slight twist on Jamaican boiled dumplings with chicken!”

Ingredients
Boiled dumplings
2 cups flour
5 teaspoons salt
1⁄4 cup cornmeal
1⁄2 cup cold water
Jerk seasoning (Note: bottled jerk seasoning can be substituted.)
1 tablespoon garlic powder
2 to 3 teaspoons cayenne pepper
2 teaspoons onion powder
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon ground allspice
1⁄2 teaspoon black pepper
1⁄2 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper
1⁄2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1⁄4 teaspoon cinnamon
Butternut squash, as much as you like, cut into cubes
Chicken, any cut, as much as you like, cut into cubes
(Note: I typically use 2 boneless chicken breasts and 12 oz. frozen, pureed butternut squash.)

Steps
1. Bring a large pot of water to a boil.
2. Combine flour, salt, cornmeal, and cold water. Adjust until you have a dough that doesn’t stick to your hands.
3. Make small disc-like shapes and drop them into the boiling water for about 10 minutes. Try not to overcrowd your pot! Remove from heat and set aside. Or they can remain in the water with the heat off.
4. Combine all jerk seasoning ingredients and set aside.
5. Bring another large pot of water to a boil and add squash cubes.
6. When squash is softened, after about 15-20 minutes, puree or mash it finely.
7. Heat pureed squash in a saucepan on medium-low heat and add some of your jerk seasoning to taste. Switch to low heat after you see bubbles. Add about 1⁄4 cup of water if you want a thinner sauce.
8. Season the chicken with jerk seasoning and cook it however you like; throw it in the air fryer if you’re in a rush or sauté it like I usually do.
9. Once the chicken is cooked, add it to the saucepan with the squash and resist the urge to eat it immediately. Let it simmer together on medium-low heat for 5 minutes. Make sure the chicken gets surrounded by the sauce. The sweet and nutty taste of the squash will interact really well with the jerk seasoning.
10. Transfer the dumplings to a plate and put some chicken and squash directly on top!

Yield: 4 servings l Time: About 60 minutes

Clint Ramos’ Filipino Chicken Adobo

Clint Ramos, head of design and production in the Fordham Theatre program, has won several awards, including a Tony and an Obie, for his set and costume designs. He posted a photo of his chicken adobo on Instagram that prompted inquiries about the recipe. With roots in the activist street theater scene in Manila, he advises that one eat the dish while pondering “how much of what you enjoyed was indigenous or a result of Spanish colonialism.”

Ingredients
2 pounds boneless chicken thighs (I like skin but you can also do skinless)
4 dried bay leaves
8 tablespoons dark soy sauce (I use Kikkoman)
8 tablespoons coconut vinegar (apple cider vinegar will also do well)
8 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
11⁄2 cups water
3 tablespoons cooking (canola or any high heat) oil
1⁄4 teaspoon salt (optional—the salinity from the soy may be enough)
1 teaspoon whole peppercorns
1 teaspoon brown sugar

Steps
1. Marinate chicken in soy sauce, vinegar, and garlic for at least 3 hours or overnight in the fridge.
2. Separate chicken from marinade, removing as much of the liquid as possible. Save all of the marinade (this will be your braising liquid).
3. Heat oil in a pan on medium-high heat and brown chicken on both sides (about 2 minutes per side).
4. In the same pan, pour in the marinade (garlic and all) and water. Bring to a boil.
5. Add bay leaves and peppercorns and reduce heat to low to simmer.
6. Simmer for 30 minutes or until chicken is tender. I completely cover it for 15 minutes and let some of the steam out for the remaining 15 with a wooden spoon lodged between lid and pot. Important: Watch that the liquid reduces to a slightly thickened sauce but not completely.
7. Add sugar and cook for another 5 to 10 minutes.
8. Serve over hot white or brown rice and enjoy!

Yield: 6 to 8 servings l Time: About 60 minutes

Loren Avellino’s Banana Lace Cookies

As a first-generation Italian-American woman, Loren Avellino, FCLC ’07, says she practically grew up in the kitchen. In fact, when she got the opportunity to live in McMahon Hall for the summer as an orientation coordinator at the Lincoln Center campus, she hosted pasta nights for fellow summer residents. Today, she has a degree in culinary arts, a catering company, and a food blog. She recently started a video cooking series on her Instagram page, @lo_go_cook. “When I’m in the kitchen, my anxiety seems to melt away, and if I can take others on that journey with me, especially during these uncertain times, then I’ve done a tiny part to help during this crisis,” Avellino says.

Ingredients
1⁄2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon white or apple cider vinegar
1 cup mashed brown bananas (about 2 large bananas)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup almond flour*
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup dark chocolate chips
*Almond flour is important for crispy, lacy cookies (see tip on next page about using only all-purpose flour)

Steps
1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Beat together the butter and sugar until fluffy.
2. Add the vinegar and vanilla and continue to beat until incorporated. The vinegar helps to offset the sweetness of the ripe bananas.
3. Add the baking soda in with the mashed bananas, then mix into the butter mixture.
4. Whisk together the all-purpose flour, almond flour, and salt. Add to the batter and mix until just combined.
5. Fold the dark chocolate chips into the batter.
6. Drop tablespoon-size amounts of batter onto parchment or silicone-lined baking sheet, making sure they are about 2 inches apart. You should have 42 to 48 cookies.
7. Bake 12 to 14 minutes until the edges are dark brown. (The dark color is important for crispy cookies). Let the cookies cool on the cookie sheet for at least 10 minutes before moving to a wire rack to complete cooling.

Tip: You could use only all-purpose flour, but the cookies will be denser and less crispy than the almond flour version.

Yield: 42 to 48 cookies l Time: About 45 minutes

B.A. Van Sise’s Ricotta Gnocchi with Roasted Pepper Sauce

Photojournalist B.A. Van Sise, FCLC ’05, jokes that his mother preferred food “so heavy that a black hole would not easily escape its pull.” For her homemade gnocchi, she’d replace the potato with rich, creamy ricotta and make the supple dough herself, rolling it and cutting it by hand. “It’s an easy activity that does not need but asks for six hands,” Van Sise says. “Recruit your kids for help, if you’ve got them. Trust me: they’ll remember it, fondly.”

Ingredients
Pasta
2 pounds ricotta cheese
4 eggs
4 cups flour
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon pepper
Sauce
1 16 oz. jar roasted red peppers
1⁄2 cup heavy cream
4 tablespoons garlic
2 tablespoons butter
1⁄2 teaspoon dried basil
black pepper

Steps
1. In a large mixing bowl, mix the ricotta and eggs. Gradually add the flour, salt, and pepper.
2. Knead well on a floured board and roll into finger-sized long rolls, then cut into pieces about 3⁄4 inch long.
3. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the gnocchi, stirring gently from time to time to make sure they don’t mingle too much. Cook for 8 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, in a blender, add the roasted red peppers as well as about 2 tablespoons of liquid from the jar, and puree.
5. In a saucepan, sauté the garlic and butter for approximately 2 minutes until both the butter and garlic soften; add the pureed peppers, the basil, and a little bit of black pepper. Simmer for 5 minutes, then add the heavy cream and simmer for 5 more.
6. Cover the drained gnocchi with the sauce, and either serve right away or put into a preheated oven at 350 degrees for 10 minutes to crisp them up.

Yield: 4 to 6 servings l Time: About 40 minutes

Serving Those Who Are Hungry

The economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic has led to an increase in the number of people who can’t afford food and are at risk of going hungry. Fordham graduates are among the many professionals working to meet the challenges of this deepening public health crisis. Read our interviews with Camesha Grant, Ph.D., GSS ’00, ’07, vice president of community connection and reach at the Food Bank for New York City; and Janet Miller, GSS ’97, senior vice president at CAMBA, a Brooklyn-based nonprofit that provides social services to New Yorkers in need.

Additional reporting by Tom Stoelker.

The shift to remote learning last month necessitated by the COVID-19 outbreak has presented unique challenges to students and professors in the performing arts. They’ve been forced to temporarily leave behind concert halls, dance studios, and theaters, and in some cases, to reconsider the very nature and purpose of what they do.

In Theater, Special Attention to the Medium

“It’s a huge challenge to adjust to this, and like any kind of trauma, it plays itself out very differently in different personality types. To be aware of that and sensitive to that is an education,” said George Drance, S.J., artist-in-residence at Fordham University Lincoln Center and a member of the Fordham Theatre faculty.

For Drance, who is teaching the courses Acting IV and Theatre, Creativity, and Values this semester, the shift has involved helping students learn and rehearse plays such as The Centaur Battle of San Jacinto while separated by both space and—for students not on the East Coast—time. Scenes would be impractical to rehearse on Zoom, so students have been working on monologues instead. Drance also split his Acting IV class into an East Coast group and a West Coast Group, and when they meet in person, it’s primarily to review monologues the students have recorded of themselves earlier.

“We decided to really use the platform to focus on individual on-camera technique, because they’re dealing with a camera instead of an audience,” he said.

“So rather than force a Zoom conference to be anything other than it is, we took it as a way to demonstrate how the principles of working with a partner and doing on-camera work are really the same principles but executed with subtle differences.”

Drance said he has also challenged his students to ask themselves what it’s like to be attentive to themselves now that their regular routines have been stripped away.

“How can you be patient with yourself, rigorous with yourself, and generous with yourself according to what is appropriate for each moment? In that way, it’s very Ignatian,” he said, noting that Saint Ignatius, the founder of the Society of Jesus, often spoke of focusing on whatever is more conducive to a person’s place and circumstance.

Clint Ramos, head of design and production in the theater program, said when it comes to set design, students who would have been expected to turn in the second of the semester’s two projects are instead receiving in-depth tutorials. Even if students can’t build models of theater sets from home, they can still dissect the texts of plays and discuss emotional responses that might then be translated into physical forms.

“When we’re looking at a text, instead of immediately jumping to a design, we spend a lot more time talking about the piece, its social implications, what could be a potential design for it. We’ll research materials that could lead to a design rather than concentrate on the practical methods of designing the piece itself,” he said.

Stage Directing a Zoom “Play”

For Lillian Rider, a Fordham College at Lincoln Center junior who will graduate in December with a degree in theater design and production, the pandemic ended her chance to stage manage To The Bone, the final production of the department’s mainstage season.

Instead, the cast came together via Zoom for a reading of the play on April 18, the day that would have been the final performance of a two-week run. Roughly 90 people attended, and Rider supervised from her parents’ home in Hartford. Although it was never meant to replace a real performance, she and director Lou Moreno took small steps to make it more than a regular Zoom meetup, such as making sure the backgrounds behind actors were similar.

At the conclusion, audience members were allowed to turn their cameras on, and the cast could see them applaud. It was a far cry from the real thing, but Rider said she was satisfied that it did what she most wanted it to do, which was reunite the cast and introduce new people to the material.

“We had a few sound problems, which were bound to happen, but we just didn’t stop, and they worked themselves out. I was texting actors throughout, helping with technological things, but nothing that held up the run,” she said.

“I didn’t think I’d actually end up getting to manage a mainstage show this year, but it did end up being a lot of management, a lot of emails and scheduling, and then I got a hand in the running of the show.”

For Music Class, Professionals Record Students’ Arrangements

Nathan Lincoln-DeCusatis, an assistant professor of music, was fortunate that the two classes he is teaching this semester, Music Theory II and Jazz Arranging, are more amenable to online instruction, thanks to music-writing sites like Noteflight. After some trial and error, he settled on a system where he makes a prerecorded lecture of himself playing chords and working with notation software. Live meetings are reserved for questions about the lecture and demonstrations of exercises students can practice.

“It’s like a flipped classroom, because you do the lecture for homework, and then you do the homework together in class. As I’ve gotten better, I’ve been able to do more in real time over Zoom, because I’ve figured out tricks like how to play the music from my computer,” he said.

Lincoln-DeCusatis did lose a live performance element of his music theory class, as he had arranged for professional musicians to visit class and perform pieces that students had arranged. Rather than scrap it, he emailed the students’ works to the musicians, who then recorded them in their home studios and returned tracks to him. He then synced the tracks—one each for a trombone, tenor saxophone, alto saxophone and bass—with a piano track of his own, and uploaded the finished result to SoundCloud.

“It actually sounded better than anything we’ve done before, because that’s how you record in a recording studio,” he said.

“Every instrument is isolated, and you can mix it and add effects to it. It sounded really great; it’s the best-sounding outcome we’ve had so far. That was probably my greatest pandemic teaching triumph.”

Antonio Rivoli, a sophomore at Fordham College at Rose Hill majoring in music and urban studies, and one of Lincoln-DeCusatis’ music theory class students, is also enrolled in the Afro-Latin Music Ensemble course. The course was significantly hampered by the suspension of in-person instruction, but he said that ensemble director Peter “Jud” Wellington shifted the focus of the class to sampling, a change Rivoli has embraced wholeheartedly.

“We’ve really challenged ourselves to make the best out of a really difficult time. No one expected that this could have happened, and to be putting together other kinds of projects that the courses aren’t designed for has been really cool,” he said.

Rivoli said he’s also tried to make the most of his time at home in Battery Park City.

“I have a microphone, and I took music production last fall, so I’ve been doing some mini-recordings to try to be productive. I’ve been practicing more guitar, which I never do on campus. So there have been certain perks,” he said.

A Barre in Brooklyn

Meagan King is, in her words, “trying to find the light in everything.” By now, King, a senior in the Ailey/Fordham BFA program, would have normally auditioned for one of Ailey’s two dance companies, where she hopes to dance upon graduation. Instead, King is studying at her parents’ home in Mill Basin, Brooklyn.

“I’ve been trying to stay ready,” she said.

“I’ve been telling myself, ‘If I put in the work now, I won’t have to feel like I’m unprepared when it comes to the audition.’ I know that I can be naturally nervous in auditions as most people are, but I want to take out all the extra factors that can take away from me just shining.”

In addition to working with instructors, King has been using the time to explore online presentations from other dancers. She’s been working on the custom-made barre her father built for her and her younger brother, who is also a dancer, and she’s dampening her ballet slippers to give her more grip on the floor.

Like her fellow seniors, she has had virtual conversations with dance professionals from around the city that were arranged by the Ailey Company, to address any concerns related to the field. The talks have spurred her to think deeply about why she started dancing in the first place, as a student at LaGuardia High School of Music and Art in Manhattan, just a few blocks from Fordham’s Lincoln Center campus.

“I realized, that kind of free spirit is the same person I want to connect to now when I get to go out and do my audition whenever this is over. It’s easy, once you have the knowledge, to become critical of yourself,” she said.

“Not to say I should just be reckless and audition, but I feel like I’m taking off layers in this quarantine so I can just dance. I have the knowledge; I have the foundation I’ve been working on.”

Melanie Person, co-director of the Ailey School, said the school has had to rely more on video and written instruction in lieu of in-person instruction, and instructors are particularly sensitive to the fact that students’ living rooms and bedrooms are no substitute for a spacious, well-lit studio.

Person also noted that self-discipline has always been paramount for world-class dancers.

“At Ailey, they’re taking two to three dance classes a day, even via Zoom,” she said.

“This requires self-motivation and self-discipline that you really need anyway for dance, but now you really have to draw more from your own reserves for this. You’re a dancer, this is what you do, you have to have to keep your own schedule with it.”

There is a culpable sense of loss born from the fact that the community is separated from each other, she said. But perhaps counterintuitively, Person said, it can be empowering for a dancer to assume complete responsibility for themselves and their art.

“It’s a different model. It’s time to be reflective. And really, you can sit back and think about, ‘Why do I dance?’ Once you have distance from something, perhaps you come back to it with a different appreciation and from a different perspective. I believe that is what is to be gained from this.”

Last fall, Playbill listed Fordham among the colleges most represented on Broadway, so it’s no surprise to find three alumni and one Fordham Theatre faculty member among this year’s Tony Award nominees.

Fordham Theatre alumna Julie White, PCS ’09, is up for best featured actress in a play for her turn in Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus. Written by Taylor Mac, Gary is an imagined sequel to Shakespeare’s violent revenge drama. It’s set amid the decline of the Roman Empire and tells the story of the minor characters left with the macabre cleanup work following the gruesome events of Shakespeare’s original.

In her review for Vulture, Sara Holdren praised the “combined zaniness and pathos of [White’s] marvelously feverish performance” as Carol, a midwife who is merely mentioned in Shakespeare’s play, and added that it is “all but impossible to imagine Gary without [her] brilliantly kooky antics.”

White previously won the Tony for best actress in a play in 2007 for The Little Dog Laughed, and she was also nominated for best featured actress in a play in 2015 for Airline Highway.

Meanwhile, Ephraim Sykes, FCLC ’10, has been nominated for best featured actor in a musical for his role as David Ruffin in Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations. New York Times critic Ben Brantley noted Sykes’ “spectacular scissor splits” and “smoking hot” performance as the music legend who sang lead vocals on Temptations hits like “My Girl” and “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,” but who was as personally troubled as he was talented.

“This is the most monstrous role I’ve ever had to take on,” Sykes told Broadway.com. “The award [for me] is when I walk out of the stage door, and I meet somebody that says, ‘What you did really connected to me.’”

A graduate of the Ailey/Fordham B.F.A. in dance program, Sykes has previously been nominated for three Astaire Awards for his roles in Broadway productions, including Hamilton. He has also toured with the Ailey II dance company, and in 2016, he played Seaweed J. Stubbs in NBC’s televised live production of Hairspray!

Tony Award winner Clint Ramos, who joined Fordham Theatre last fall as head of the design and production track, has been nominated for best costume design for his work on the play Torch Song. He won the Tony in that category in 2016 for his work on the play Eclipsed.

Rounding out this year’s list of Fordham nominees is producer John Johnson, FCLC ’02, who got his start on Broadway as an intern for Joey Parnes Productions during his junior year at Fordham Theatre. He has a total of seven Tonys to his credit (among Fordham alumni, that’s second only to his mentor, Elizabeth McCann, LAW ’66, a nine-time Tony Award-winning producer).

This year, Johnson has been nominated twice, as an executive producer of best play nominee Gary and of The Waverly Gallery, which is up for best play revival.

Six additional members of the Fordham family are part of productions that have been nominated for 2019 Tony Awards:

• Siena Zoë Allen, FCLC ’15, associate costume designer, What the Constitution Means to Me
• Kaleigh Bernier, FCLC ’16, assistant stage manager, Be More Chill
• Jessie Bonaventure, FCLC ’15, assistant scenic designer, What the Constitution Means to Me and Hadestown
• Drew King, FCLC ’09, ensemble, Tootsie
• Fordham Theatre student Wayne Mackins, ensemble, The Prom
• Michael Potts, former Denzel Washington Endowed Chair in Theatre at Fordham, Mr. Hawkins, The Prom

The 73rd Annual Tony Awards ceremony will be held on Sunday, June 9, at Radio City Music Hall in New York City.

Dinner and a Show: Fordham’s alumni office hosts theater outings as part of its cultural events series. On May 9, a group of alumni and guests saw Tootsie and heard from Fordham grad and ensemble member Drew King, FCLC ’09, in a special talkback session after the show. Plans are underway for an October outing to see Ain’t Too Proud featuring Tony-nominee Ephraim Sykes, FCLC ’10. Tickets will be available soon via the alumni events calendar.

A Tony and Obie award winner who was recently tapped to head Fordham Theatre’s Design and Production track, Ramos was identified as gifted when he was young. He was dispatched to a school set up by the Marcos regime that offered free room, board, and tuition to talented students.

“In theory, it was wonderful because of everything available to us, but of course it was all very corrupt,” he said.

He was enticed when an iconoclastic drama teacher encouraged him to perform at a small plaza in the middle of Manila.

“We would do these seven-to-10-minute allegorical pieces in a business district. In the beginning, I didn’t know it was against the Marcoses.”

His job was to hold a red pole with a flag so people knew where to gather and when the performance began.

“And then we had to really finish on time because otherwise the cops would arrive and they would come with water cannons,” he said.

“I come from that generation, the last generation, that was able to really interface with some sort of consciousness against the Marcos regime.” Political consciousness and theater have been intertwined for him ever since. Now, as a teacher, he hopes to impart a moral consciousness into students’ view of theater.

“I kind of fell in love with the idea of political theater, which is often different from the theater I do here, but I still carry the same core,” said Ramos, who came to New York in the mid-’90s to study theater.

Ramos is at a point in his career where he can turn down jobs that are not a good fit. In addition to his Tony, his Obie Award in 2013 was for Sustained Excellence in Design. He’s also taken home three Lucille Lortel Awards, two American Theater Wing Henry Hewes Awards, a Helen Hayes Award, and three Drama Desk nominations. His scenic and costume design credits on Broadway include Eclipsed with Lupita Nyong’o, Torch Song, Six Degrees of Separation with Allison Janney, Sunday in the Park With George with Jake Gyllenhaal, Violet with Sutton Foster, and The Elephant Man with Bradley Cooper. He’s also designed on London’s West End and for the National Theatre there.

“I would turn down something that is opaque, something that is so blatantly commercial that it won’t say anything, or doesn’t really move the conversation forward,” he said. “And by conversation, I mean the conversation we’re having right now as a country and as a society—about race, about injustice, about gender—all of that.”

The 2017 revival of Once on This Island earned him a Tony nomination for his costumes. Though it was a commercial effort, he said the musical dealt with issues he is concerned about both beyond the theater, such as global warming, and within the theater, such as inclusiveness (the cast is entirely composed of actors of color).

He added that while Broadway bears the reputation of its blatant commercial successes, there are plenty of important stories being told. He cited Eclipsed, the play for which he won the 2016 Tony for costume design. The story of five Liberian women surviving the Second Liberian War, it was the first play with an all-black female cast to premier on Broadway and was noted for its mostly-female creative team. For his part, Ramos became the first person of color to take home the Tony in the costume category for his work on that show.

“I think with bigger profile jobs come a bigger audience, and through that I can say a lot of things that are important to me,” he said “When we did Eclipsed on Broadway, that was major. I feel like we underestimate the audiences too much. Every single human being who walks into that theater has a political point of view.”

All of which fits directly into the Jesuit mission, he said, adding that he and his siblings were educated at Jesuit grade schools.

“I actually got really giddy when I saw that Fordham students have to take three classes of theology,” he said. “When I saw that, it reminded me fondly of my high school. That’s part of my consciousness.”

In his new role as assistant professor of theater design at Fordham, Ramos began teaching theater history this semester. In the spring, he will team with the established production staff and begin to teach courses on set and costume design as well as run a design production workshop.

He said that as designers and “as aesthetic curators,” artists and students need to take the “pulse of the popular culture to be able to create some sort of reaction from the people viewing it.”

What that looks like on stage is up to the student, he said.

“I don’t really try to think of teaching as ‘I want to create these theater artists.’ For me, I really just want them to come out of the program as really good citizens with a solid identity. That’s above anything else.”