Ann L. Ardis

Professor of English and Associate Dean
College of Arts and Sciences

Ann Ardis (B.A. University of Kansas, 1979; M.A., Ph.D. University of Virginia, 1988) has published extensively on turn-of-the-twentieth-century British literature and culture. The common thread running through all of her major research projects to date has been an interest in the relationship between recorded history and silence as well in what Raymond Williams has termed the “machinery of selective tradition.” Professor Ardis has served as Program Chair for the Modernist Studies Association (2003-05), MLA representative for the Late Nineteenth/Early Twentieth-Century Division (1999-2002), Director of the University Honors Program (1998-2002), and Director of Graduate Studies in English (1994-98). She is currently Associate Dean for the Arts and Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences, and serves on the Advisory Board of the Modernist Journals Project, which is jointly sponsored by Brown University and the University of Tulsa, and of Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies.

Xiang Gao

Director, Master Players chamber Series at the University of Delaware Associate Professor of Music, University of Delaware

Recognized as one of the world’s most successful violinist soloists from China, Xiang Gao is cited by the New York Times as “a rare and soulful virtuoso”. He has performed for many world leaders, and his musical integrity and virtuoso technique have gained accolades from audiences and reviewers around the world. Conductor Neeme Jarvi’s comment was “I have conducted many of the world’s top soloists including Joshua Bell and Lang Lang. Mr. Gao is an artist of this stature!” As a creative musician, Mr. Gao composes, arranges and performs in the styles of jazz, bluegrass, Asian folk, and South American music. He is a member of the renowned “China Magpie” ensemble under Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, which combines the styles of all music from Chinese folk to western classical and rock music. Recently, the Stradivari Society in Chicago selected Mr. Gao to be a recipient of a Stradivarius violin for his international concerts. Mr. Gao is the founder and director of three non-profit art organizations: China Music Foundation, “China Virtuosi” chamber ensemble and the University of Delaware’s “Master Players Chamber Series. ” At the University of Delaware he instructs both undergraduate and graduate students and leads the graduate string quartet.

Joyce Hill Stoner

Director, Preservation Studies Doctoral Program, University of Delaware
Professor and Paintings Conservator, Winterthur/UD Program in Art Conservation

Joyce Hill Stoner has taught for the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation for 32 years and served as its director for 15 years (1982-1997). She has been a Visiting Scholar in at the Metropolitan Museum and at the J. Paul Getty Museum. She now serves as the Director of the Preservation Studies Doctoral Program for the UD which embraces topics in both Historic Preservation and technical study of art. Both an art historian and a practicing paintings conservator, Stoner has treated paintings for many museums and private collectors and was senior conservator of the team for the five-year project of examination and treatment of Whistler’s Peacock Room at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. In 2006-07 she served as guest curator for Factory Work: Warhol, Wyeth, and Basquiat for the Brandywine River, McNay, and Farnsworth museums. Stoner has authored more than 85 book chapters and articles. She is now co-editing the multi-author, international, 700-page Butterworths-Elsevier book on Conservation of Easel Paintings due to be published in 2011. In 2004 she was appointed to the U.S. Senate Art Advisory Committee and in 2005 to the Delaware State Arts Council. In June 2003 she received the American Institute for Conservation “Lifetime Achievement Award” sponsored by University Products.

Patricia Sloane-White

Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Delaware

Patricia Sloane-White is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology specializing in Southeast Asian Islam, corporate culture, gender, and capitalism. After a decade of senior-level business experience on Wall Street, she earned a doctorate in Social Anthropology from the University of Oxford. She has conducted extensive fieldwork on social and economic change, entrepreneurship and Islamic capitalism in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She has written numerous articles and a book, Islam, Modernity and Entrepreneurship among the Malays.

Rosalind Johnson

Director, Arts and Humanities Summer Institute, University of Delaware

Rosalind B. Johnson, Ph.D., is Director of the Arts and Humanities Summer Institute within the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Delaware. In the past Ms. Johnson has held positions at the Center for University Outreach and Applied Developmental Sciences at Michigan State University, the National Center for Maternal Education and Child Health at Georgetown University, the Center for Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, and Child Trends Research Center in Washington, DC. She has also been a consultant with the Walter K. Kellogg Foundation, conducting program reviews and evaluations related to service learning programs at both the community and university levels. She has co-edited a book on international child development, published numerous technical papers and reports, and presented research papers at professional conferences. Ms. Johnson earned a B.A. in Psychology from Rutgers University-New Brunswick, a M.S. in Public Policy and Urban Management from the New School University, a M.A. in Education and Human Development (specializing in Counseling) from George Washington University, and a Ph.D. in Psychology from Michigan State University.

Deborah Alvarez

Assistant Professor of English, University of Delaware

Areas of interest include adolescent composing and literacy processes. During 2006, she had an opportunity to work with teachers who had survived the Hurricane Katrina disaster. As a result, she has been conducting research on literacy, adolescents and trauma in various New Orleans schools. During the winter session 2007, she taught a course ENGL 300, Text and Context, the literature of disaster, with a service learning component in New Orleans for two weeks of the winter session semester. Ah, jambalaya, jazz and a little disaster in the Big Easy. Check out (http://www.udel.edu/PR/UDaily/2007/feb/katrina021507) for more information on the course and student responses. Professor Alvarez is working with a colleague from the University of New Orleans to publish a collection of teacher and students stories about their experience with Hurricane Katrina. She has a blog for these stories: http://www.english.udel.edu/blogs/alvarez. She plans to use all of her New Orleans experiences and research for future publications on literacy, adolescents and learning after Katrina.

Video Presentation by the Professional Theater Training Program with Dr. Leslie Reidel

Leslie Reidel has directed for the Walnut Street Theatre, the Milwaukee Repertory Theatre, New York's Young Playwright's Festival, and the Colorado, Utah, Ft. Worth, and Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festivals. He taught acting, text analysis, scene study, and directed in the actor training program at Temple University for ten years prior to participating in the establishment of the PTTP at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he served on the faculty for eleven years before the program was relocated to the University of Delaware. Mr. Reidel has served as drama critic for the Philadelphia Review and Philadelphia After Dark and was the resident director for the Great American Children’s Theatre for fourteen years. He is currently the co-artistic director of Philadelphia's Enchantment Theatre Company whose productions have been seen across the United States. He directed the New York workshop of The Magician, a new play with music, and recently received his third grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities which took him to Stratford, England for work on Shakespeare. Mr. Reidel is a graduate of Muhlenberg College and received his M.F.A. from Temple University.