The Arts

For more than 50 years, the Plutzik Reading Series has brought Nobel laureates, Pulitzer Prize-winning writers, and National Book Award winners to River Campus.

Professor James Longenbach's next books—Earthling  and Lyric Knowledge—will soon be released. This National Poetry Month, Longenbach reminds us, “the best poems ever written constitute our future.”

The longtime faculty member in the College’s music department—and champion for its programs—will retire as director of orchestral activities at the close of the spring semester.

Pultizer Prize–winning poet Anthony Hecht was on the Rochester faculty for nearly two decades, arriving in 1967. Alumnus Jonathan Post ’76 (PhD) published Hecht's correspondence in a book that sheds new light on his poetry.

Friday's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony will welcome one of the most musically diverse class ever. John Covach, director of the University's Institute of Popular Music, walks us through this year's inductees and—with the help of his guitar—the Yes hit Roundabout.

Can poetry thrive in an age of instant communication? As April's National Poetry Month begins, University's poetry faculty and students have found that the answer is an emphatic "yes." The pace of digital life has only quickened over the last ten years since Twitter was founded, but the slower process of reading and crafting poetry continues, robustly, at Rochester.

Rochester will host the U.S. premiere of God Has No Country, a one-man play written and performed by Donal Courtney. The drama tells the story of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, who used his Vatican connections to harbor Jews, ultimately saving more than 6,500 lives.

According to the 2017 QS World University Rankings released on March 8, eleven U.S. universities ranked in the top 25, with the University of Rochester No. 8 among them.

Poet James Longenbach and novelist Joanna Scott, both members of the English department, have received fellowships from the Bogliasco Foundation this spring, for notable achievement in the arts and humanities.

Christopher Celenza, a professor of classics at Johns Hopkins University, will speak on “Machiavelli: Yesterday and Today” as the keynote speaker of this year’s Ferrari Humanities Symposia on March 7.

Pretty and rich, Alyssa Long attracts the attention a newcomer, Felix Maia. Alyssa disappears, and rumors proliferate on social media. Described as Gossip Girl meets Lord of the Flies, That Poor Girl and How He Killed Her opens the International Theatre Program's spring season with a dark comedy that looks at social media and social justice.

Stories of love written by biochemistry graduate student Karl Smith—whose hobby is writing stories for strangers on his 90-year-old Underwood typewriter and charging 10 cents per story—are paired with vintage Valentines from the libraries collections.