Research Report: Local Arts & Culture 2012

Professor Elam's scholarly work focuses on contemporary American drama, particularly African American and Chicano theater. In addition to his scholarly work, he has directed theatre professionally for more than eighteen years. Most notably, he has directed several of August Wilson’s plays, including Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, Two Trains Running, and Fences, the latter of which won eight Bay Area “Choice” Awards. Harry J. Elam, Jr. is the Olive H. Palmer Professor in the Humanities, the Robert and Ruth Halperin University Fellow for Undergraduate Education, Director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts, and Director of the Committee on Black Performing Arts. Prof. Elam is the author of Taking it to the Streets: The Social Protest Theater of Luis Valdez and Amiri Baraka; The Past as Present in the Drama of August Wilson (winner of the 2005 Errol Hill Award from the American Society of Theatre Research); and co-editor of four books, African American Performance and Theater History: A Critical Reader (winner of the 2001 Errol Hill Award from the American Society of Theatre Research); Colored Contradictions: An Anthology of Contemporary African American Drama; The Fire This Time: African American Plays for the New Millennium; and Black Cultural Traffic: Crossroads in Performance and Popular Culture. His articles have appeared in American Theater, American Drama, Modern Drama, Theatre Journal, Text and Performance Quarterly, as well as journals in Belgium, Israel, Poland, and Taiwan. He has also written essays published in several critical anthologies. Elam is the outgoing editor of Theatre Journal and on the editorial boards of Atlantic Studies, Journal of American Drama and Theatre, and Modern Drama. In 2006, Elam was the winner of the Betty Jones Award for Outstanding Teaching from the American Theatre and Drama Society, the winner of the Excellence in Editing Award from the Association of Theatre in Higher Education, and the winner of the Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Society of Theatre Research. He was inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Theatre in April 2006. At Stanford he has been awarded five different teaching awards: the ASSU Award for Undergraduate Teaching, Small Classes (1992); the Humanities and Sciences Dean’s Distinguished Teaching Award (1993); the Black Community Service Center Outstanding Teacher Award (1994); the Bing Teaching Fellowship for Undergraduate Teaching (1994-1997); and the Rhodes Prize for Undergraduate Teaching (1998). He has taught at Stanford since 1990, and is the former director of the Introduction to the Humanities program. Elam’s directing résumé includes Tod, the Boy Tod by Talvin Wilks for the Oakland Ensemble Company, and for TheatreWorks in Palo Alto, Jar the Floor by Cheryl West and Blues for an Alabama Sky by Pearl Cleage, which was nominated for nine Bay Area Circle Critics Awards and was winner of DramaLogue Awards for Best Production, Best Design, Best Ensemble Cast, and Best Direction. Elam is now the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education (VPUE).

Robert Glavin held senior positions at the California Academy of Sciences, University of San Francisco, San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, American Hospital Association, and Georgetown University. In addition to serving as an executive director, he held positions heading development, marketing, public affairs, government relations, and various program functions. He then served as Senior Consultant to the San Francisco-based management consulting firm of Fitzgerald & Graves, where he and his colleagues provided capital campaign, fundraising, and other counsel to numerous organizations including the University of California, Berkeley, KQED, Zeum, Golden Gate National Park Conservancy, Montalvo Arts Center, Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Honolulu Symphony Orchestra, Contemporary Museum, Honolulu, San Francisco SPCA, and Larkin Street Youth Services. Robert Glavin is an Adjunct Professor at the University of San Francisco, where he teaches nonprofit management, governance, strategic planning, and fundraising at the graduate level. He holds a bachelor’s degree in government from Georgetown University and a master’s degree in nonprofit management from the University of San Francisco. He serves on the Advisory Board of the Horizons Foundation. He has previously served as a member of the Harry S. Truman Foundation Scholarship Selection Board; Dean’s Advisory Board, College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at the University of California, Riverside; San Francisco Recreation and Park Department Advisory Board; the Board of the USF Institute for Nonprofit Organization Management; Dean’s Council of the USF School of Education; New Leaf Services Advisory Board, and Kairos House Community Board. He was President and Chairman of the Board of the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival and he was the founder and Chair of Advancement Leaders Fighting AIDS.

Dana Hemenway is an artist and arts administrator living in San Francisco, CA. She received her BA in 2003 from University of California, Santa Cruz MFA in 2010 from Mills College in Oakland. Prior to graduate school Dana worked for the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery as the Gallery Manager and as a Survey Coordinator for the San Francisco Arts Task Force. Dana has curated & juried exhibitions at the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, Root Division, 31 Rausch St, and Artist Television Access in San Francisco. As an artist, Dana has exhibited her artwork locally, nationally and internationally including the following venues: Proyectos Monclova in Mexico City, Mexico; Southern Exposure, Intersection for the Arts, Mission 17 & Artist Television Access in San Francisco; the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley; and Bragg's Pie Factory in Phoenix AZ. Since 2010 she has been working as the Studio Manager/ Artist Assistant for Camille Utterback.

Jennifer Lovvorn has worked in the arts for over ten years. Prior to joining the San Francisco Arts Commission as a Public Art Project Manager she worked at the Arts Council of Fort Worth & Tarrant County where she managed public art projects and implemented a community-nominated neighborhood projects initiative. She has served on the advisory boards of Southern Exposure, a San Francisco-based artist-run gallery, and the San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery. She received her MFA in studio art with an emphasis in sculpture from UC Irvine in 2000, and she holds a BA with a double major in Film Studies and Art Practice from UC Berkeley.

Ebony McKinney is the Founding Director of Emerging Arts Professionals/SFBA, a network focused on empowerment, leadership, and growth of next generation arts and culture workers in the San Francisco Bay Area through knowledge sharing, learning opportunities, and partnerships. She was instrumental in helping to establish the statewide California NextGen Arts Leadership Initiative funded by The James Irvine Foundation and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. She currently serves on the Citizen's Advisory Committee at Grants for the Arts/San Francisco Hotel Tax Fund, the Funding Advisory Council for Oakland Cultural Affairs and is a member of the Emerging Leader Council of American for the Arts. She's also served on selection panel for the Joyce Foundations Emerging Leaders of Color Fellowship.

Artist-in-Residence, Dance. Robert Moses has been on faculty at Stanford University since 1995 and is currently Artist In Residence in Drama and Dance as well as the director of the Committee on Black Performing Arts. He has been faculty, master teacher and/or guest faculty at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, University of Texas, University of Nevada, Mills College, San Jose State University, Saint Mary’s College, Long Beach State, Jacob's Pillow, Collumbia College Chicago, the Bates Dance Festival, Colorado Dance Festival, California Dance Educators Association and the American College Dance Festival. Moses directs his own San Francisco-based company, Robert Moses' Kin, and he has also has set commissioned works on Philadanco, Cincinnati Ballet, England’s Transitions Dance Company of the Laban Centre, Dance Exchange in London. Mr. Moses has also choreographed for the San Francisco Opera. Mr. Moses work has been performed nationally and internationally, including in England, Italy and Ireland. Prior to establishing Robert Moses’ Kin, Moses danced with American Ballet Theater, Twyla Tharp Dance, ODC/San Francisco, Long Beach Ballet, Walt Disney World Productions and Gloria Newman Dance Theater, among others.

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