About the Institute

Administration and Staff

Director

Marica S. Tacconi is Professor of Musicology. Specializing in music history, her interdisciplinary research interests also include the art, culture, and politics of medieval and Renaissance Italy. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in musicology from Yale University and has taught at Penn State since 1998. She is the author of Cathedral and Civic Ritual in Late Medieval and Renaissance Florence: The Service Books of Santa Maria del Fiore (Cambridge University Press, 2005) as well as numerous articles, essays, and catalogue entries. In 1997 she co-organized a manuscript exhibition at the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana of Florence, for which she was also the co-editor of the catalogue (I libri del Duomo di Firenze. Codici liturgici e Biblioteca di Santa Maria del Fiore, secoli XI-XVI; Centro Di, 1997). Professor Tacconi’s research has been supported by several institutions and grant agencies, including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Foundation, and the American Musicological Society. She is also the recipient of an AMS 50 Dissertation Award from the American Musicological Society, a 2001 Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching from the College of Arts and Architecture, and a 2002-03 Villa I Tatti residency fellowship from the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies in Florence. Professor Tacconi also serves as the Penn State institutional representative to Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life, a national consortium of over seventy-five universities, colleges and arts institutes committed to civic engagement in the arts, humanities, and design.

Assistant Director

Robert R. Bleil recently received his Ph.D. in English from Penn State University, where he is also Lecturer in English. Specializing in English and American literature of the fin-de-siècle (ca. 1880-1920), his interdisciplinary teaching and research interests include literary depictions of masculinity in the late-Victorian and Modernist periods, transatlantic literary exchanges, suffragette literature, the history of the book, textual scholarship, the history of libraries, and nineteenth-century English domestic art and architecture. His dissertation, Temporarily Devotedly Yours: The Letters of Ginevra King to F. Scott Fitzgerald, introduces readers to Ginevra King, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s first significant romantic attachment, and makes available new information concerning Fitzgerald’s literary ambitions as an undergraduate at Princeton University. He is the recipient of a Waddell Biggart Graduate Fellowship, the Harold F. Martin Graduate Assistant Outstanding Teaching Award, and travel grants from the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Society for the Study of American Women Writers. Rob has delivered talks on Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, American suffrage literature, and the illustrations for Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure. He received his M.A. (English) from Penn State University, his M.L.S. (Academic Librarianship) from the University of Pittsburgh, and his B.A. (English and Philosophy) from the University of Notre Dame.

Staff

Susan Reighard, Administrative Assistant: Sue recently celebrated her twentieth year with the Institute. She is particularly interested in issues of diversity and serves on the Office of the Senior Vice President for Research Diversity Council. Sue is the recipient of the 2000 Outstanding Staff Award and of the 2006 Diversity Award, both awarded by the Office of the Senior Vice President for Research. In her spare time she is active in her local kennel club's public education and community service projects and shows Bulldogs.
Garrison Gunter, Graduate Assistant (graphic design): Photographer and graphic designer Garrison Gunter studied at CalArts, receiving his bachelor’s degree in Fine Art Photography in 1998. Since then he has worked for MTV Networks as a Macintosh consultant, for Nickelodeon as a graphic designer, and on individual photographic projects, shooting chef showcase events sponsored by Martha Stewart Living, Gourmet and the American Heart Association. In 2003, Garrison began attending Penn State University to pursue a Master’s degree in Art Education. As the designer for the Institute, Garrison has focused on creating a consistent style that still allows each project to have its own voice.
Ece Akdeniz, Graduate Assistant (events and programs): Ece, a Ph.D. candidate in Art Education, came to Penn State after receiving her Master's degree in Art Education from Ohio State University. Her previous teaching experience in grades K-1 through 12 merged with her college teaching experience, and as a result, the focus of her research and teaching became the integration of art into the curriculum. Ece's research interests include issues of diversity, reflections on critical thinking and critical teaching (Culturally Responsive Teaching), interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary approaches to teaching art, and integration of visual culture in art education.

Executive Council

Barbara Korner, Dean, College of Arts and Architecture

Susan Welch, Dean, College of the Liberal Arts

Advisory Board (2009-2010)

Dan Carter, Director, School of Theatre, Professor of Theatre

William Doan (ex officio), Associate Dean for Administration, Research and Graduate Studies, College of Arts and Architecture, Professor of Theatre

Gary Knoppers, Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, Religious Studies, and Jewish Studies

Nancy Locke, Associate Professor of Art History

Raymond Lombra (ex officio), Associate Dean for Administration, Research and College Advancement, College of the Liberal Arts

Bénédicte Monicat, Head, French and Francophone Studies, Professor of French and Women's Studies

Marcy North, Associate Professor of English

Mrinalini Sinha, Professor of History and Women's Studies

Ken Tamminga, Professor of Landscape Architecture

Christine Thompson, Professor of Art Education

Penn State Institute for the Arts and Humanities

About the Institute

Administration and Staff